[1][2] While Kingsolver's novel is similarly about a boy who experiences poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues.

[3][4][5] The book touches on themes of the social and economic stratification in Appalachia, child poverty in rural America, and drug addiction with a focus on the opioid crisis.

[6] Damon Fields is born to a single teenage mother in a trailer home in Lee County, in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.

Over the summer, the Peggots take Demon on a trip to Knoxville, where he meets Maggot’s aunt June and his cousin Emmy.

After a second failed foster family, Demon decides to hitchhike to Murder Valley, Tennessee, to find his paternal grandmother.

Finally, he reaches his grandmother, Betsy Woodall, a hardy old woman who lives with her disabled brother Dick.

Demon takes a job at a farm supply store and meets and falls in love with Dori, a young girl his age.

One rainy day, Demon and Maggot are invited to go to a waterfall called the Devil's Bathtub to meet Fast Forward.

[7] In Bookmarks January/February 2023 issue, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a (3.5 out of 5) based on critic reviews with a summary saying "If one appreciates the Dickensian framework, one might view Kingsolver as "our literary mirror and window (Minneapolis Star Tribune)".

[8][9] Ron Charles of The Washington Post praises Demon Copperhead as his "favorite novel of 2022"[6] as it is "equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love.

"[6] Writing for The Guardian, Elizabeth Lowry contends that "while the task of modernising [Dickens's] novel is complicated by the fact that mores have shifted so radically since the mid-19th century … the ferocious critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children is as pertinent as ever.

Her characters wallow in dark hollows with little light, condemned to forever repeat the horrific mistakes of previous generations.

She makes the people of Appalachia into objects of pity, but in doing so, also intimates that falling into drug abuse, rejecting education, and 'clinging' to their ways are moral choices.