This is the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. In transposing his epic novel to her own place and time, Kingsolver has enlisted his anger and compassion, and, above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story.