Hello from Guam! I flew back to Guam last weekend, and over 20 hours of travel and too many time zones to count made for a long series of flights. The two books I’m highlighting today were read while I was home and travelling and mark my first two books of 2025. The first is a buzzy fiction book I borrowed from our school’s librarian, but its hefty size meant I waited until my winter break to tackle it. The second book popped up on my Kindle Unlimited library and examines in great detail the IBLP cult (the religious cult the Duggar family is famously a part of) and similar extremist movements.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
During Tom’s last year of residency, he rotated at a hospital in Roanoke, Virginia to get more trauma experience, and because it was less than a six hour drive, I went out to visit him twice for long weekends. Having grown up on Long Island, a flat stretch of suburbia that boasts a hill as the highest peak, I always see mountains as a kind of magic. I love the enormity and ancientness of them. I love how they shelter and protect as they carve out valleys under their watchful eyes. While Tom was in the operating room, I remotely worked from Woodshed: An Appalachian Joint, a welcoming space offering locally-focused crafts, foods, and books. I, of course, had to bring home some reading material, and as I researched and read over the past year, I came to see the pain that scars and mars the beauty of the Appalachian mountain communities. Fiercely resilient and deeply misunderstood as backwoods hillbillies, Appalachians have been especially impacted by the opioid epidemic and have suffered from a lack of opportunities, education, and necessary support. Demon Copperhead is an invitation or, rather, a demand, to see how the media, industry, and government have ignored or contributed to the life-threatening, deeply damaging problems that plague these tight-knit, small communities and how this generation of children are suffering the consequences.
Kingsolver ambitiously chooses to take on Dickens' famous David Copperfield to show how modern day orphans, a term we often associate with foreign nations rather than our own states, are facing obstacles that are often insurmountable as they come of age. Demon is a powerfully memorable character because his voice is distinct and crystal clear. He is angry, he is hurt, he is abandoned, he is afraid, he is desperate for love, he is lost. He is a child whose bad luck streak never seems to end and his good luck always seems to be haunted or temporary. His childhood, while challenged by his single mother’s addiction and poverty, is, in his eyes, almost idyllic. He has woods to wander in, a sprawling clan of found family with an open door, and a place in his world that is clear and certain. However, his mother’s abusive marriage and deadly relapse upend Demon’s world as he is wrenched from the tight-knit community he knows and sent on a journey of wanderings through the fringes of society as a foster child.
My heart broke so many times over, but I couldn’t stop reading because I wanted to believe in a happily ever after. And I can assure you, Demon does find his happiness, and it is not only isolated until the end. Kingsolver’s pacing is brilliant in that she can bring you to tears and make your blood boil in anger at the injustices Demon and so many American children face because of the scourge of drugs, violence, and poverty, but she also can show such sweet moments of found family, self-discovery, and simple kindness. Demon is the magnifying glass and the mirror that shows us in vivid and unflinching detail what our society is struggling with, and while there is no clear answer to these problems, the solution of kindness and empathy is an easy enough one to apply in our daily lives. We can never know someone’s struggles, but we can be the light in their darkness. In a season of creative rewrites of classics, this one is worth the hype.
A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from the Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings
For the past year, I have been really fascinated by the cult of Bill Gothard. My mom and I used to watch 19 Kids and Counting on TLC, and since Josh Duggar’s arrest, the family has continued to make headlines as their daughters and other survivors from their cult come forward with their harrowing stories of abuse and control. Tia Levings was a featured interview on the documentary, Shiny Happy People, and her memoir spares no details in how she became trapped in an increasingly abusive relationship.
Levings’ story is fascinating, frustrating, and often just plain depressing as she chronicles how fear and a desire to please, to be part of the community, to avoid sin, and to keep others happy meant that she continuously sacrificed her health, happiness, and opportunities as well as the basic welfare of her children. While Levings did manage to keep her children safe from her husband’s physical abuse, I wish she had chosen to leave earlier. It is heartening to see how she increases her personal freedom and financial freedom as she uses the power of her writing and the broad communication and community the Internet provides. It is empowering to see her make the decision to leave and to create a life for her family that is safe from violence and fear. It is frustrating beyond words that she chose to get married in spite of the obvious red flags and to stay married despite all of the evidence that things were not going to get better.
Her story is a vivid example of domestic and family violence, the power of fear, and how easy it is to be trapped in an unsafe community and relationship (and how hard it can be to leave). It’s a reminder of how important it is to show kindness to friends and strangers because you never know what’s happening behind closed doors. It’s a condemnation in no uncertain terms of churches that rule by fear, control, and a sermon of subservience rather than the love, grace, and forgiveness of God that are the true cornerstones of the Christian faith. I would not reread this story because of the upsetting content, but if you wanted an unflinching, uncensored glimpse into modern day cults that are more common than you realize, it is worth a read.
Watching: This week I finished watching A Man on the Inside, a comedy about an elderly widower who goes undercover at a senior living home to try and discover who stole a valuable necklace. I don’t usually cry during movies and TV shows, but I had legitimate tears rolling down my cheeks in the last episode. There were so many heart-warming and wholesome moments with characters you can’t help but love, but there were so many moments about the grief of aging and loss that really pulled at my heartstrings. I can whole-heartedly recommend it. Plus, because it’s a Michael Schur show, there’s lots of actors from The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Parks and Recreation.
Doing: To work towards my fitness goals, I did a sunset yoga class, and it was gorgeous, challenging, and so rewarding. While I’m sore, it feels good to know that I can push myself to do challenging things. On Saturday Tom and I had a double date with my coworker and her fiancé to compete in a trivia night at our local brewery. We got first place and can’t wait to compete again in a couple of weeks.
Eating: I made my great grandma’s recipe for blueberry sour cream cake, a favorite breakfast and snack of my childhood. Because of how expensive fruit is, I don’t purchase it often, but I found a good deal this weekend and had to take advantage of it!
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