The Copperhead

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "One of the bravest, most bracing novels I've read in years." --Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Jessup's stepfather gave him almost everything good in his life--a sober mother, a sister, a sense of home, and the game of football. But during the years that David John spent in prison for his part in a brutal hate crime, Jessup came to realize that his stepfather is also a source of lethal poison for his family. Now it's Jessup's senior year, and all he wants to do is lay low until he can accept one of the football scholarships that will be his ticket out of town. So when his stepfather is released from prison, Jessup is faced with an impossible choice: condemn the man who saved his family or accept his part in his family's legacy of bigotry. Before he can choose a side, Jessup will cause a terrible accident and cover it up--a mistake with the power to ruin them all. Told with relentless honesty and a ferocious gaze directed at contemporary America's darkest corners, Copperhead vibrates with the energy released by football tackles and car crashes and asks uncomfortable questions about the price we pay--and the mistakes we'll repeat--when we live under the weight of a history we've yet to reckon with. Alexi Zentner unspools the story of boys who think they're men and of the entrenched thinking behind a split-second decision, and asks whether hatred, prejudice, and violence can ever be unlearned.

Set during the American Civil War, 'The Copperhead' by Harold Frederic is a historical novel that delves into the dangerous realities faced by those who opposed the war in the North. The story follows the life of Jimmy Beech, an orphaned boy adopted by a family of farmers who believe that the Union should make peace with the Confederates instead of waging war. As tensions escalate, Abner Beech, the patriarch of the family, falls from grace and becomes ostracized by his community for his Copperhead beliefs. Meanwhile, his son Jeff enlists to fight in the war, which only intensifies Abner's bitterness and political convictions. Frederic's novel is thought-provoking and offers a fresh perspective on a lesser-known aspect of American history.

It was on the night of my thirteenth birthday, I know, that the old farm-house was burned over our heads. By that reckoning I must have been six or seven when I went to live with Farmer Beech, because at the time he testified I had been with him half my life. Abner Beech had often been supervisor for his town, and could have gone to the Assembly, it was said, had he chosen. He was a stalwart, thick-shouldered, big man, with shaggy dark eyebrows shading stern hazel eyes, and with a long, straight nose, and a broad, firmly shut mouth. His expansive upper lip was blue from many years of shaving; all the rest was bushing beard, mounting high upon the cheeks and rolling[Pg 2] downward in iron-gray billows over his breast. That shaven upper lip, which still may be found among the farmers of the old blood in our district was, I dare say, a survival from the time of the Puritan protest against the mustaches of the Cavaliers. If Abner Beech, in the latter days, had been told that this shaving on Wednesday and Saturday nights was a New England rite, I feel sure he would never have touched razor again.