One Drink Book Club | Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another edition of the One Drink Book Club. Today's book is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Demon Copperhead tells the story of a smart and charismatic boy growing up in Southern Appalachia who is constantly dealing with poverty, drug addiction,

[00:00:24] abandonment, foster homes, and death. My guest is David Liles, a good friend who is a big reader as well as a boater, bike rider and former chief of staff to a longtime senator from Michigan. Thanks for joining me David. David Liles My pleasure, Jamey.

[00:00:38] David Liles So you recommended this to me on a Facebook post. Tell me why you liked this book because I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a great suggestion. David Liles Well, Jamey, maybe you remember I'm

[00:00:48] about snake phobic so to think that I would enjoy a book with the word Copperhead the title is a little strange. Especially since we have a lot of Copperheads on the side of the mountain, I'm leaving it all right now. But anything that Barbara Kingsolver writes

[00:01:05] is going to be a good book. You know, I read four or five of her books before Demon Copperhead and I read several more afterwards. She's a tremendous, tremendous writer. And I guess the thing that struck me most about Demon Copperhead, Jamey, was we all heard

[00:01:22] about the opioid epidemic in this country and what it was doing to rural America. But this book brought that home to me more than any newspaper article or any news report. It really brought home to me how damaging it was to small town rural communities.

[00:01:41] I kind of wondered as I'd see these huge settlements from some of the pharmaceutical companies, I wondered what was their liability here? She puts very clearly what their liability was. Yeah, I thought she did a great job of not being necessarily preachy about it from a

[00:01:57] public policy standpoint. But you put the nail on the head. She put real stories and real examples of how people were just taken advantage of by the system and by even the way that the Medicare and Medicaid and disability had all played into kind of

[00:02:15] the growth of these things. And so I agree. And it was interesting for me. I grew up in a small town. It wasn't Appalachia, but it was a smaller town and I knew people from small towns in the Midwest.

[00:02:28] And I thought it did a very good job too of kind of describing how different life was and entertainment was. And if you live in a big urban place, you have access to a lot more distractions. And in these smaller towns,

[00:02:43] you know, the Shell station is the place people gather because they don't have any restaurants or they're very limited on those things. And so I thought she did that very well. And I don't know about you, but I

[00:02:54] Googled Lee County and did it on Google Maps to see where it was and try to place some of those things. It's in the South Side Virginia, I believe. Yeah. And it's only about an hour south of Blacksburg.

[00:03:07] And my daughter went to Virginia Tech, so I've been to that area quite a bit. But it was almost shocking to me that that place was within a five hour drive of where I live.

[00:03:19] Right. It just seemed like a world away, but it's not far away at all. There was one scene she described where Damon and his girlfriend went to a clinic, you know, and everybody in the parking lot was trying to swap and get some

[00:03:33] drugs. It was haunting. It really was. To see people were so desperate to do this. Did you read Empire of Pain, which was kind of the story of Purdue Farmer? Great book. It was done by the Wall Street Journal reporter who kind of broke

[00:03:48] the story. And it's so disturbing. And it goes into the Sacklers and the family and their decisions. And one of the things that was clearly obvious in the book, but then she really spelled it out with that pain clinic that everybody was lining up

[00:04:03] in front of, which was kind of run by a sham doctor who was just sitting there prescribing pills, pills, pills for everybody who walked through the door. And it just goes to show that Purdue Farmer was shipping him these pills. They knew that this guy was writing

[00:04:20] whatever thousands of prescriptions for them to claim later that they had no idea that these were being abused or that this was happening. It was just obviously bulk. Actually, you know, they know it. But you know, Jamie, we were caught up in the story of the opioid

[00:04:36] catastrophe, but the description of the foster child situation in the county was pretty harrowing too. Yeah, one of the things in this book, there are plenty of villains to go around, but there's also some real positive people who care.

[00:04:53] But the foster system and the people in it just seemed despicable. I think one of the people I hated the worst was Mr. Crickson, which was kind of this farmer who lived by himself and was using the boy sent to him as pretty much slave labor.

[00:05:09] Exactly. Yeah. And not giving him decent meals or decent place to live. Well, and he went to another family too that did the same thing where they were practically starving him. Yeah, because it wasn't profitable for them to have him and then feed him too. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:27] It just it was so sad to see that. And I think King Solver tried to pin some of it on the fact that the system was privatized to some degree, but I'm not fully convinced one way or another, whether it was private or government, that it would

[00:05:43] be much better one way or another. But it really is a shame. I hope there are good foster parents out there. I know that there probably is. Oh, I know some in Arlington. I do some in Arlington, Jamie. There are really, really wonderful foster parents out there.

[00:05:57] In the rural community where this took place, I don't think there was the oversight from the social workers that there needed to be. I'm sure they were stretched way too thin. Yeah. And so that we couldn't keep track of what they needed to keep track of.

[00:06:10] And there's one scene in it where demon was telling his social worker about the abuses at one of the houses. And she said, well, those two boys that are being whipped and abused aren't under her company or her jurisdiction.

[00:06:27] So like, I couldn't do anything about it, but it's just seen crazy that if you had a kid telling you, hey, this stuff is happening, this abuse is happening and you're the social worker, then you don't do anything about it.

[00:06:38] You know, I think I told you that the last thing about a Kindle is when you find something you like, you can just leave it there and come back to it. And I do that with the last three or so pages of the book where

[00:06:49] Angus says, let's drive to the ocean and show it to you. And he suddenly realizes, good Lord, the girl has set her cap. All that he had gone through in the book to finally come to that realization it was just heartwarming.

[00:07:06] I kind of wondered, you know, that's not the first time that phrase was used in the book, the girl has set her cap because remember, it was somebody he was living with and she told demon, I think that girl has set her cap.

[00:07:18] I think it was demon thought it was somebody else. Yep. That was his Betsy Woodall, I think. Yes. His paternal grandmother said that. He did think it was somebody else. And so that was the thing I liked about it because there were parts of the book

[00:07:34] that I felt really hard to keep reading on because you saw him spiraling in this addictive funk and when he went to live with his girlfriend who was addicted, you knew this was not going to turn out well. Right.

[00:07:49] And if I had one complaint about the book is that I thought it was maybe a little longer than it needed to be because I just felt so depressed about his situation. But it did end in a way that was inspirational.

[00:08:01] I don't want to give away the ending but you felt good at the end and you felt like he had come through the storm. But man, it was rough there for a while. And the amount of time that he had to spend in rehab or under supervision,

[00:08:18] I mean it takes that long to get off the stuff, I guess. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting. I read Empire of Pain and I had some medical procedure not long after that and they gave me some Oxycontin and I flushed it down the toilet.

[00:08:33] I didn't take any of them. After reading a book like this or Empire of Pain, you don't want to touch it. Like it's crazy. Yep. Right. What a blight on society. Exactly. Right, exactly. Well speaking of addictions, I have not covered what my cocktail was for tonight.

[00:08:50] And this was a little tough to come up with an inspired cocktail because they drink in the book but there's not like something that was obvious. So I actually invented a cocktail because I was trying to think, all right, Appalachia, small town.

[00:09:03] So I started with what I thought was the perfect base and that is Mountain Dew. This is Mountain Dew, vodka, a little bit of grapefruit juice and then a cherry because I feel

[00:09:15] like Dory or some of the women in the book would like kind of a fancy drink. I didn't have any umbrellas for it. And I'm calling it the Lee County Cooler as my cocktail for tonight. Well, congratulations. Very appropriate.

[00:09:32] Well, like I said, there were a lot of really heartwarming characters that did at least try to help demon out throughout the book. Who are some of your favorite people who were good influences in his life?

[00:09:47] Well, I think the best person in the book, the one that appealed to me most was Angus. Yeah. You know, she kind of never lost faith in him. She stayed in contact with him. There were others. Well, Angus' father was a little too wedded to football.

[00:10:06] Yeah, although he did provide the most stable home that he experienced and the fact that he could have all he wanted to eat. That seemed horrible to me to be constantly worried about your next meal.

[00:10:20] And I thought the Pagots in general were a really great family, Aunt June and Grandma Pagot. They also provided a structure for demon and showed him what family actually looked like since he had really no examples on his own side. Even if he didn't like her oysters. Right.

[00:10:43] But I think one of the most heartbreaking parts of it was when he was looking for a home and he broke down and asked Grandma Pagot if he could live with them.

[00:10:57] And when she had to tell him no, and it was for obvious reasons, they were getting old, they just didn't have what they could. But it was just a heartbreaking conversation where these were the only people he knew

[00:11:10] who were parental to him and them kind of rejecting him. Made you just, was really tough to read that scene or hear that scene. I listened to this book and the narrator did an incredible job of the dialects and the voices and everything else.

[00:11:26] I've grown to really appreciate good voiceover talents for these books and she did a great job. Another question I had, some of the things I really liked about demon was the author's ability to have demon make observations.

[00:11:44] Some of his phrases, which were I thought were great, his skull movies and things like that. I was so impressed at her ability to also write his dialogue and even his thinking both as a small child and growing up and changing it as it happened.

[00:12:01] He's such a gifted writer. Unbelievable. And this motivated me to read the Poisonwood Bible. And in there, she did the same thing where there was lots of children at different ages and parents and her ability to get in their head and whether it's their internal dialogue

[00:12:20] or their external dialogue make it seem age appropriate and also insightful. Whereas I find some writers, their characters observations are so deep that I think, well, nobody thinks like that but hers seems so natural. It's so impressive. Have you read other King's Oliver books? Oh my goodness. Yeah.

[00:12:40] The Poisonwood Bible is one of her earlier ones but I kind of went out a kick of reading some of her books and I'll just call some up for my Kindle here. Prodigal Summer, Pigs in Heaven. I really enjoyed Pigs in Heaven a lot. Bean Trees.

[00:12:57] The Poisonwood Bible was about 20 years old, isn't it Jay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Missionaries in Africa. Correct. Correct. It was a little brutal in some places. Yeah. And King's Oliver actually lived in that area of rural Virginia for a while and also lived in Africa. Oh really?

[00:13:16] Oh, I knew that. I knew that. She wrote some of that stuff kind of not firsthand but at least had a real grip on what she was writing about there. Right. Right. Didn't just come out of her head.

[00:13:29] And I think the Poisonwood Bible also was an Oprah book. Early on in the Oprah Book Club world which can really make or break an author depending on what Oprah says. Several I look for.

[00:13:41] Reese Witherspoon, if she endorses a book, I'm going to be interested in it because you know it's going to be good. Same way with Oprah. Yeah. Which is I think is great. I love to see authors get that kind of exposure especially if it's a first book

[00:13:55] or they're an unknown author. Right. Because I think it's a real challenge to get exposure for a new book. There's so many out there. One of the things that's been fun about doing this podcast is that I've started to get book publicists sending me books.

[00:14:12] I keep telling them, well you know this is not a big operation here but it's been fun and I've done a couple first time authors where I've actually had the author on and then I will

[00:14:23] talk about it later but one of my favorite authors is Amor Tolles who wrote A Gentleman in Alaska. Oh, yeah. I would be glad to talk about Amor Tolles. His new book is coming out in April and I just read it. I got an advanced copy.

[00:14:36] Well, what is it Jamie? So it's called A Table for Two. I can't really talk about it until it gets published but I will tell you it's really good. There were three books of Amor Tolles I read that the first one is A Gentleman in Moscow.

[00:14:51] I don't know if you want to talk about this. Sure, sure. A Gentleman in Moscow which I was not that impressed with. Funny. But then I read The Link in the Highway and I just thought that was a wonderful wonderful story.

[00:15:03] The other one was Rural's Disability which I also thought was excellent. Yeah. I drove from here in western North Carolina. I drove to Detroit to speak at the memorial service for my boss, Senator Levin and I

[00:15:16] remember driving into the Lincoln Highway and there's a sign on the bridge that says the Lincoln Highway. Yeah, I love them all and I have a special place for the gentleman in Moscow but all of them I thought were good.

[00:15:32] Just great characters, good storytelling and I think my least favorite was Rural's of Civility but I recently went back and reread that and liked it a lot more the second time. Right, yeah. Well what other things are you reading that you suggest? Well they're a couple.

[00:15:49] If you like Barbara Kingsolver you'll like Lee Smith. I don't know if you know who Lee Smith is. I don't think I have read anything. Okay. She grew up in Southside Virginia and the

[00:16:00] two books I would recommend most are Fair and Tender Ladies, an early one by her and I've got to get this off my shelf. Hold a minute. Jamie this is one if you have an hour flight you could pick it up and read it. Oh wow.

[00:16:14] Blue Marlin by Lee Smith. Okay. Oh my goodness, a little bit of a coming-of-age story of her own life but she is a very prolific writer and very well known as a Southern writer so anything by Lee Smith is going to be a good book.

[00:16:29] I know you read Blind Your Ponies. Yeah, excellent book. Well wasn't that a great book? His book got until they bring the streetcars back. Unfortunately that's not available on Kindle. You have to order the book from Amazon but it is also a coming-of-age story

[00:16:48] that is so riveting in places. I never do this. I had to go ahead read a few pages ahead to make sure it turned out right. It was a terrific book. A terrific book. Have you heard of the book West with Giraffes? No.

[00:17:03] Oh Jamie you got to read this. It's actually a true story. Of course the author had to fill in the blanks but the San Diego Zoo ordered two giraffes and they came into New York through one of the worst hurricanes imaginable and they put them on a truck

[00:17:21] and drove them to California and they hired this young kid to do it and he had to modify the truck so they could. Oh my goodness it's a wonderful, wonderful story. I really, really recommend it and the author you know she tells a story of what happened

[00:17:39] on this certain day and then she'll have a newspaper clip from the time that talks about two giraffes coming through town. Oh that sounds good. Yeah it's really terrific and well I know you've read Boys in the Boat.

[00:17:55] Yeah fantastic although I will say have you seen the movie yet? Yeah I did. I did. What did you think of the movie? Jamie I thought that the book would have been too ambitious.

[00:18:08] To me what was so remarkable about what happened was how he got to the University of Washington not what happened after he got there. I mean the fact that it 14 his parents said I'm sorry we can't see you anymore you're on your own.

[00:18:22] And at 10 they did you know a similar thing he had to go live in the school house. I mean yeah. Remember when he was in they didn't show this when he was in the University of Washington he went out to work on the Hoover Dam. Yeah.

[00:18:34] He found they paid 50 cents more an hour if you'd hang over the side on a rope and drill but the movie was very, very close to the book. Yes and no and I understand the limitations you have when you're doing it

[00:18:49] but the races that they did they truncated those completely and made it seem like there was less struggle for that junior boat that made it. Right. And I was really disappointed with the character development.

[00:19:03] There was very little ick you didn't feel like you knew Joe and like you said I think if I were going to make the movie I might focus more on the pre yeah how we got there because that was incredible.

[00:19:16] Well I was surprised that they could recreate the German Olympics the way they did. They did a nice job of that. Actually I thought the best line in the whole movie Jamie was not one that was in the book

[00:19:28] when they and the guy turned to Jesse Owens and said are you going to show those people and he said no I'm going to show the people back home. Yeah I thought that was well done and it was a nice touch but it was also another

[00:19:39] reason where I was like wait that wasn't in the book. You look every minute. That's true. That's true. That's true. Yeah that was what you've read lately. So one that I haven't done any podcast on have you read any of the Thursday murder club books?

[00:19:55] I've read them all Jamie. Love them. Oh my gosh. I did do both. I have to confess I don't know if it's allowed to say something critical on your on your show. By the fourth one they were getting a little repetitive. Yeah.

[00:20:10] Frankly the fourth one wasn't so much about the murder club it was about you know assisted suicide. Yeah yeah there was a lot of that but yeah those characters though are so endearing.

[00:20:20] They are yes they are and it's a shame that Betty White has passed because I feel like she would be perfect in the role of what's her name the. Through the former secret service. Not her but. Oh the other one yes yes the other one.

[00:20:37] Balls in love with everybody. Oh boy crazy yeah she's such a sweetheart but yeah I have really enjoyed those. One that I haven't talked about what we I recently reread have you ever read The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton? No.

[00:20:54] It's one of his first books and it's all based on a train robbery that really occurred in the 1800s in England and everything is taken from the trial and so it's very close to the

[00:21:08] truth because he has he has all this testimony from the trial but it is an unbelievable heist story and it's really interesting and it's not a long book and he kind of fills it in with interesting tidbits about the time the Victorian age and some of the culture

[00:21:26] in the city. I found it really fascinating and just great characters. They made a horrible movie version of it in either the early 80s late 70s that you should never

[00:21:38] watch because I did watch it and I thought oh my gosh this is does a total disservice to the book but it's a great fun read that's really interesting. One last one I want to mention to you.

[00:21:51] I don't know if you've ever heard the name Virginia Hall, A Woman of No Importance. I think I have heard of that one but I haven't read it. It's a pretty remarkable story. She started out working for British Special Operations in France and then went on to work

[00:22:09] for the OSS. She's a woman who remarkable woman and what's nice about it is you kind of remember she's from Maryland. I kind of came across her name in my career and when I read the book I understood why.

[00:22:22] A remarkable story of what she did behind the lines in France during World War II. Oh that sounds like something I'd really like. She started out, she was determined to be in the Foreign Service but you know a woman

[00:22:36] in the Foreign Service was not going to happen in the late 30s but she did work in the State Department and she was posted abroad and she managed to shoot her foot off in a hunting accident.

[00:22:47] So she did everything she did for the French Resistance with a prosthetic foot. Prosthetic foot. Wow. Including when the Germans got close to her, Jamie, she spent three days hiking over the Pyrenees into Spain to escape them. Oh my gosh. Prosthetic foot. Actually it's kind of a moving.

[00:23:07] My niece married a Jewish fellow and he read somewhere that that's the way a lot of Jews escaped France and escaped Europe was to hike over the Pyrenees. So about six months ago he decided he wanted to go do that so he did. Oh wow.

[00:23:22] Went to France, walked over the Pyrenees into Spain. Did you read Under the Scarlet Sky? Say that again under? No. Under the Scarlet Sky. Let me make sure I got that right. Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan. World War II, there are lots of stories.

[00:23:41] The main character who he interviewed and wrote the book from these interviews helped Jews escape Italy and into Switzerland and they had to go over whatever mountains they had to go over in

[00:23:54] the winter and he was a guide to help them do that and the stories were just unbelievable and you can't believe this guy also ended up being for the Italian Resistance but

[00:24:05] he had joined the German Army so that because if you were an Italian young guy you were going to get thrown in either the Italian Army or the German Army but the Italian Army people got sent to the front so they did. They got sent to Russia.

[00:24:19] Yeah and so he ended up, he staffed a general and was his driver so he ended up going to all these crazy meetings with Mussolini and was a first-hand witness to some incredible historic events but then would report them all to the Allies what happened who said what.

[00:24:38] So I just finished a book about pious the 12th and it's not attractive. No, no. Yeah that was a pretty bad situation but you will really enjoy. Well I'll definitely look it up. You keep thinking I cannot believe this stuff really happened.

[00:24:59] Some of it being like I can't believe he was in this situation and witnessed this and I mean he witnessed Mussolini's hanging. He was there in the square like I mean just really crazy stuff.

[00:25:10] Well David thank you so much for taking the time to talk about Demon Copperhead. Yeah we'll do this again. It's been another hour or two here. Well you know there's nothing wrong with doing another one here coming up but

[00:25:22] I think Demon Copperhead is definitely a suggested read and Barbara Kingsolver is a wonderful author and so what's fun about finding a book like this is realizing oh I've got four or five more books that I haven't read by this author.

[00:25:36] I'm really looking forward to it so yeah all right. Well thank you. It's so good to see you and to hear your voice hugs to gaitin the kids and have the same carry yours. They have the same ears.