Excerpt from Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

So in we went, Aunt June ignoring Emmy, while Maggot and I got our minds blown by a million tons of water over us with huge things swimming in it. The floor itself moved. I was not expecting that. Pulled by our own shoes into the briny deep. I turned around to see what Emmy thought, and holy Moses. The girl was dead frozen. People with their strollers and drinks jostling around her to get into this thing they paid good money for, and Emmy, scared out of her mind.

I didn't really think, just headed back. But the floor was moving, so I was going nowhere, somewhat like a dream in how it felt like time was not time. Her scared eyes watching me. I shoved through the people all looking up at sea creatures, basically Aquaman in the Lagoon of Atlantis, until I was on solid ground with Emmy hanging on me like a true drowning person.

"It's okay," I told her. "We weren't going to go off and leave you."

"She did, though. She didn't even look back."

"She wouldn't have left the building. She was coming back for you after the tunnel."

Emmy was shivering. "She didn't act like it."

"She was," I said. "Aunt June is perfect like that. She keeps track."

I figured on having to wait with her till the others came back, then hearing about the Gatlinburg fucking Shark Tunnel from Maggot for the rest of my natural life. But for whatever reason Emmy said okay, let's do it. I had to hold her hand. She kept her eyes closed.

It was true about Aunt June keeping track. Which was not true of my mom in any way, shape, or form. So that was me promising Emmy that life is to be trusted. I knew better. I should have let her go with her gut: Never get back on the horse, because it's going to throw you every damn chance it gets. Then maybe she'd have been wise to the shit that came for her later on, and maybe it would have turned out better. Which is me saying too much, for now. Sorry.

Aunt June gave us all five dollars to spend in the gift shop. Maggot bought a plastic hammerhead shark, Emmy got rock candy, and everybody was waiting. On snap decision I bought this thing for Emmy, a little silver bracelet with a snake as part of it. The package said moray eel, whatever. I gave it to her while we were walking to the car. I said probably she hated snakes, but it was like her bravery badge. She just said thanks. Then on the drive home she mentioned she was in love with me and we would get married whenever we got old enough.

Okay, I said. I was pretty much used to the chain of command by then. But to tell the truth, kind of shocked. I asked her, Why me? Why not Maggot? And she said, Duh. Matty's my cousin.

That gave me the usual sting of not having my own cousins. But I hadn't considered there being a plus side, like Emmy eligible to be in love with me. I told her I didn't know how. She said no worries, it was easy, she did it all the time with boys at school and the Popsicle stick place.

Maggot said that just proved she was a slut. I think he was feeling left out.


The day we packed up to go home, Emmy pounced with all these instructions. I was to talk Mom into letting me call her. This being the nineties, no Facebook, no texting. Emmy said if I didn't call, she'd drop me and be in love with somebody else. Might as well learn that one early, I'm going to say. But I hadn't thought much about Mom since we left. Even though she was all, Don't forget me, which I thought was stupid. Who forgets his mom? But yet I had.

I made up for it by thinking about her a lot on the way home. It's two hours, but we stopped for gas and Cokes at Cumberland Gap, and at the park where they have the bison. Mr. Peg was the slowest driver imaginable. Finally we chugged up the driveway at a mind-shattering five miles an hour, and I was ready to open the door and roll out before he got to a stop. But Mrs. Peggot turned around and laid a hand on my arm while the others got out. She said she had something she was supposed to tell me. She was nervous, which I didn't like one bit.

Excerpted from Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Copyright © 2022 by Barbara Kingsolver. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.