Told through the eyes of Demon, a boy from Appalachia, this modern David Copperfield follows cycles of poverty, foster care, addiction, and exploitation. It moves between humor and pain to render a neglected region with force and clarity.

Dickens provides the frame, but Appalachian reality gives the novel its urgency.

Darryl Pinckney reflects on the literary world of 1970s New York through his friendship with Elizabeth Hardwick and Barbara Epstein. The result is both a record of personal formation and a portrait of a cultural and intellectual community.

Literary education and urban memory come alive in an intimate act of recollection.