I am just finishing up listening to Demon Copperhead on audiobook. It was my commute entertainment for my summer course.

I have to admit that got over halfway through the story before realizing that it wasn’t just familiar to another plot, but exactly the same as David Copperfield. Not the magician, but the Charles Dickens novel about a young man with a tough go at life. Instead of highlighting the social ills of London in the 1800s, Deborah Kingsolver is shining a light on the struggle of those living in Appalachia in the early 2000s, specifically the collision of rural poverty and the meth/opioid epidemic. Beat for beat, the story swaps out the suffering of old with the suffering of new. Instead of a rotten boarding school, there’s a rotten foster placement. Rather than a gentleman, the hometown hero is a high school quarterback. Unfortunately prostitution is still prostitution, and an alcoholic is still a person who misses out on the best parts of life because their addiction takes precedence over relationships. Somethings never change.

It would be tempting to think that a modern novelist is being dramatic in order to get the reader’s attention, but there really is epic suffering. While I can’t speak to Eastern America, the experiences of some of my students testify to their validity. One student grew up in East Portland in a neighborhood filled with drugs. He is a missing a limb because while he was pursuing drugs he did not keep up with his diabetes. He also struggled with an undiagnosed learning disability which made school that much harder to navigate. I had another student who grew up in Central California who was pressured to drop out and help her family pick crops during middle school to help make ends meet. An early pregnancy pushed her completion of high school out nearly a decade, but she did not give up. Now they’re both adults getting their bachelors degrees and securing better positions in life.

Education then, as now still offers a ladder out of ignorance and poverty, although it’s neither free nor easy. There are many people still having a tough go at life, so if we can help, we should.

It seems familiar because it’s the same story as before.