“My job is never to tell you want to think but to draw you into a conversation and really invite you into a world where you have maybe never walked before and when you have finished and put that life down and come back into your own, you are different, you have felt something for the theoretical other… for me that is a political act.”
In “Demon Copperhead,” opioids destroy the mother of the boy nicknamed Demon, then ensnare him, too. To understand an addict’s experience, Kingsolver contacted the Virginia physician who sounded an early alarm about the dangers of OxyContin and now treats recovering addicts. He connected her with his patients, whose stories find their way into Demon’s.