Dear Colleagues and Fellow Writers from Around the World,
I’ll focus on three books that have special relevance today. One was inspired by Charles Dickens, and the other by Mark Twain. Two of the books paint a contrasting portrait of Appalachia. The Culture Watch tells a story of gun violence in my hometown. What We’re Reading and Why will highlight a unique perspective of a classic tale, plus an updated Calendar.
The Poisonwood Bible is one of my favorite books, as someone who has worked with missionaries and worked in Africa. But when I heard that Charles Dickens inspired her latest book, I knew I had to read it. Not a Christmas goes by that I don’t insist that my children and grandkids watch several versions of “The Christmas Carol”. And I’d read J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, so this made for a literary trifecta.
Dickens’ work helped Kingsolver overcome a bad case of writer’s block. She wanted to talk about orphans of an epidemic who became throwaway kids in a wealthy society. It took an ethereal visit from Dickens in his house in Broadstairs, where he said, “Look, nobody in my time wanted to hear about these orphans either, and I made them listen.” He went on to say,” Point of view is your tool. Let the child tell the story. And with that, Kingsolver started writing on his desk where Dickens had written David Copperfield.
The protagonist of this story is known as Demon Copperhead due to his fiery hair and fierce wit—born into poverty, addiction, and neglect, being passed from one foster home to another. His story is steeped in the despair of post-industrial rural America.
Through Demon’s life story, Kingsolver dramatizes the opioid epidemic not as a backdrop but as a central antagonist. His descent into addiction is harrowing and unflinching. She shows that pharmaceutical greed, medical negligence, and systemic poverty conspire to destroy lives. The foster care system is depicted as a treadmill of exploitation, where children are shuffled, silenced, and seemingly forgotten, although it does not offer solutions, only the naked truth. She writes with both the clarity of a journalist and the emotional depth of a novelist.
Demon Copperhead is more than a retelling—it’s a reckoning. Kingsolver has taken Dickens’ blueprint and built a land of Appalachian truth, humor, and heartbreak. It’s a novel that demands to be read, remembered, and most of all, reckoned with. (For the entire review, go here: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker – Million Mile Walker.
As someone with a Scottish/Irish background, I was fascinated to learn that so many of us ended up in the Appalachian area in dire poverty, and how difficult it was to get out of that situation. The author movingly recounts the travails of his family, the terrible toll that alcoholism, drug abuse, and an underlying code of honor took on his family, neither excusing nor judging their actions and decisions. Click here for the entire review: Book Review – Non-fiction: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Cultural Crisis – Million Mile Walker.
The two books reflect starkly contrasting portraits of Appalachia—one rooted in empathy and analysis, the other in personal triumph and cultural indictment. Like many readers, I was perplexed by the notoriety J.D. Vance received for describing the challenges of living in Appalachia, focusing on personal responsibility and skepticism of government aid, which became a touchstone for explaining Trump’s appeal to white working-class voters aligned with the MAGA movement and the highest levels of U.S. political power.
Although his grandparents were from Jackson, Kentucky, Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, outside the official Appalachia region. Focusing on personal failings: poor work ethic, bad spending habits, and a lack of ambition. “We choose not to work when we should be looking for jobs,” adding that people “spend our way into the poorhouse.”
Kingsolver was raised in Kentucky and now lives in southwestern Virginia, bringing a unique perspective on a region that has been systematically exploited by extractive industries and largely ignored by urban elites who hoard available resources for themselves. She bemoans the timber, coal, and tobacco industries, and her Pulitzer Prize-winning book dramatizes the opioid crisis and foster care system, which, through the lens of a boy born to poverty and family less, shows how institutions fail rather than support individuals.
Kingsolver’s Appalachia is complex, humorous, and resilient. Here, characters are multidimensional and capable of love, wit, and creativity despite personal suffering. Vance’s Appalachia is a caricature: lazy, backward, and in need of moral correction. Journalist Beth Macy observed that in Hillbilly Elegy, “…Vance blamed Appalachians’ woes on a crisis of masculinity and lack of thrift, overlooking the centuries of rapacious behavior on the part of out-of-state coal and pharma companies, and the bought-off politicians who failed to regulate them, and he took his stereotype-filled false narratives to the bank.”
Culture Watch
As a proud graduate of Evergreen who remembers the consequences of the Columbine massacre in 1999, I was saddened and shocked at the killing of several students. Just hours later, Charlie Kirk was killed at Utah Valley University while answering a question about mass shootings. Both incidents occurred in public, educational spaces meant for growth and dialogue, not gunfire.
These events reflect a broader dilemma: the U.S. has the highest civilian gun ownership rate in the world, with 120.5 firearms per 100 people. It also ranks among the highest in gun-related deaths, with over 43,000 firearm fatalities in 2024 alone. Mass shootings, though highly visible, account for less than 2% of these deaths. Suicide, domestic violence, and everyday interpersonal conflict make up the bulk.
In contrast, countries like Japan (0.02 gun deaths per 100,000 people) and the UK (0.04) maintain strict gun control and see dramatically fewer fatalities. Charlie Kirk, a staunch Second Amendment advocate, said in 2023:
“I think it’s worth it… to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. “His statement reflects a willingness to accept personal and societal risk in defense of constitutional liberty.
The irony of Kirk’s death with his philosophy—and the Evergreen tragedy with America’s school shooting legacy—raises the nagging question of how many lives must be lost before the balance between freedom and safety is recalibrated?
What We’re Reading and Why
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Percival Everett’s James (2024) are separated by a century and a half. Yet, both confront the legacy of American racism through the lens of a fugitive slave named Jim. Twain’s novel, which is one of the most popular books in American literature, is simultaneously revered and reviled for its use of racial slurs and portrayal of antebellum attitudes. Everett’s version reimagines the same narrative from Jim’s Point of view.
Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a satirical indictment of Southern society’s racism, focusing on Huck’s moral awakening and his decision not to expose Jim. Twain does a masterful job exposing the hypocrisy of a society claiming Christian virtue while upholding slavery. But Twain’s use of the N-word and depiction of Jim as a superstitious and childlike character have raised the question of whether he truly transcends the racist tropes it portrays.
What makes Everitt’s book unique is that he gives Jim a voice that Twain denied him. Jim is literate, philosophical, and acutely aware of the racial dynamics that shape his world. The novel deconstructs the original’s paternalism and reframes Jim not as a victim but as a protagonist navigating the violence of white supremacy, making Everett’s work more than a retelling but a reclamation, challenging readers to confront the false narrative of American literature and the erasure of a Black worldview…
Both books have faced censorship over the years, although for different reasons. Huckleberry Finn is banned for its offensive language and insensitivity. At the same time, James has already sparked controversy for his unflinching portrayal of racial violence and his challenge to racist, hierarchical authority.
Which might have been the case with Huckelberry Finn in the late 1800s. Yet the very discomfort these books provoke makes them essential as they force readers to grapple with the moral contradictions of their culture and the power of storytelling to either obscure or illuminate the truth. Go here for the entire review: James by Percival Everett, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker – Million Mile Walker.
What Others Are Saying
Consider this to be my Moritz Thomsen Project update—a writer’s response to my essay, “Ramon and Moritz: A Partnership on a Black Coast,” which will be part of the Moritz Thomsen Reader:
Thanks for showing me this. It is exciting and fun to read, but I have lost touch with the world of publishing to the point where I would not know where to begin advising you on where to try to place it. A very accomplished travel writer friend of mine has just written a piece about the 50th anniversary of Theroux’s “Great Railway Bazaar,” and, for all of his fame and connections, he cannot seem to find anyone interested. “Publishing”, per se, I think, has been put into a self-induced coma, all of which has made it kind of boring to me, I must admit. The platform game seems to me like posting “Have You Seen This Cat?” posters on telephone poles all over the world. I just don’t know if “publishing” will ever come back…” Hang in there, Bro.” Christopher West Davis, Letters From Moritz Thomsen.
Calendar
- October 9-11, 2025, Desert Nights Rising Stars Writing Conference
- October: My interview on the Podcast “Soft Power Ful Stories”
- November 15th, Arizona Authors Association. I’ll attend as a board member and will accept the award on behalf of my friend, fellow author, and co-founder of Seeds for a Future, Earl de Berge.
You can find my 85 book reviews and 28 articles, as well as several videos and photos, on my website, which also offers a reduced price for my new book if you read it and pass it along to your local library: http://millionmilewalker.com. “Follow” me on Blue Sky—at (2) @millionmilewalker.bsky.social — Bluesky, Substack- Mark D Walker| Substack – and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/millionmilewalker/ for the latest international affairs and literature. Please share the link to the sign-up page with the Dispatch for any friends you think may be interested in it. Million Mile Walker Newsletter – Million Mile Walker.
And, as always, if you’ve read Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, the Best Travel Book according to the Peace Corps Writers, and, of course, my most recent book, The Guatemala Reader, please review and rate them on Amazon and Goodreads.
Shalom!
Mark D. Walker