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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Alexi Zentner is the award-winning author of two previous novels, The Lobster Kings and Touch. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, Glimmer Train, and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008, among others. He lives with his family in Ithaca, New York.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Zentner (Touch) wades into thorny racial and class thickets in this steely and often gripping novel. The action unfolds over several days in the rural university town of Cortaca, N.Y., a thinly veiled Ithaca. Jessup is a high school senior who "will always have been born into the wrong family," blue-collar congregants of the Blessed Church of White America. He stopped attending the white nationalist church after his half-brother and stepfather were convicted in the beating death of two black college students four years earlier. Jessup excels at athletics and academics, and is dating the daughter of his black football coach, when his stepfather's release stirs up old memories in Cortaca, where "history is everything." A racially-tinged accident involving a boy from a neighboring town forces Jessup, aware of how bad it will look given his family history, to return to the Church, and its 20-year-old media-savvy spokesman, for help. The short chapters, most no longer than three pages, lend the narrative a propulsive, if occasionally choppy, feel. There's a tendency to hammer home themes such as the indelible markings of family and class, and in the book's last third, the taut drama morphs briefly into a conspiratorial thriller that strains credulity. Nonetheless, Zentner's portrait of a young man's conflicting desires for disavowal and belonging is rich and nuanced. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A slow, gritty coming-of-age story in which class, racial, and family tensions come to a head in one long weekend.It's a snowy November Friday in upstate New York, and Jessup is 17, smart, and a fine linebacker who may be tackling for Yale next year. In a playoff game, he makes a crushing hit and scores. But in the parking lot later, the black player he took down, Corson, confronts Jessup, who is white, and terrible events are set in motion that will leave Corson dead and Jessup mired in a coverup that spotlights his dark family history. His brother, Ricky, is serving a 20-year sentence for killing two black men four years earlier when they attacked him because of racist tattoos on his torso. Jessup's stepfather, David John, went to prison on a lesser, related charge and is just out. The family attends the Blessed Church of the White America, where the elders "have been promising a racial holy war." The police go after Jessup as an obvious suspect in Corson's death, and a media-savvy church member sees a martyr who can rally more whites to the cause. Jessup is a likable but painfully ambivalent young man, closely tied to his family yet silently opposed to their racist credo and desperate to escape their trailer home, their muddle of virtues and vile racism. It's a stretch for him to have a black girlfriend but more implausible for her to not know of his family history before they become intimate. Zentner (The Lobster Kings, 2015, etc.), a Canada-born novelist, has written two literary works under his own name and four thrillers as Ezekiel Boone. His characters here are well-drawn, though the story has some weak spots and his bedeviled linebacker is prone to repetition that can sound at times like whining.A persuasive take on a familiar theme: the venomous prejudices lurking in small communities. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Zentner's (The Lobster Kings, 2014) latest novel dramatizes the impact of hate and violence on small-town America. Gentle-hearted Jessup is a high-school linebacker who hopes to score a college scholarship and leave Cortaca, his hometown in upstate New York. Known for its respectable university, Cortaca's outskirts are lined with trailer parks, in one of which Jessup's family lives. But his desire to skip town has less to do with his backwoods upbringing and more to do with escaping his family's stigma as white supremacists. His brother is in prison for killing two Black boys, and his stepfather has just been released after arrest for a related but lesser charge on the very day of Cortaca High's first playoff game in years. Jessup pummels the opposing team's star running back and becomes the hero, but his big hit stirs tensions that result in a death, drawing national media attention and turning Jessup's life upside down. With punchy prose that evokes Jessup's fight to sidestep his family's shadow, Zentner expertly and entertainingly distills America's longstanding divisions over race, religion, and class.--Jonathan Fullmer Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN A NOTE ADDRESSED TO THE READER ?? the first page of his new novel, "Copperhead," Alexi Zentner says the book was inspired by two firebombings of his parents' office next door to his home when he was 18. No one was ever arrested for the attacks, which were clearly targeted at his mother, a prominent local activist fighting anti-Semitism. But instead of writing about the bombings and their effect on his family, Zentner was curious to explore "how racism and hate are at work even in the lives of those who don't think they've chosen a side." He wrote "Copperhead" in an attempt to inhabit the minds of the kind of people who would do such a thing. Anchoring the bighearted tale is Jessup, a poor white teenage boy with a troubled family past: After his brother Ricky's racist tattoos sparked a predawn fight, two black college students died. Jessup's stepfather, David John, was mixed up in the conflict, and both were hastily convicted. Jessup has spent the last few years diligently trying to outlive the past with a combination of good grades, football, a part-time job and caring for his mother and younger half sister. He has a shot at an Ivy League school. But when a postgame confrontation with a black player from a neighboring town escalates, Jessup finds himself enlisting the help of the just-paroled David John. The local white supremacist church is soon involved, and events quickly go from worse to worst. This is Zentner's third book (not counting the thrillers published under his pseudonym, Ezekiel Boone), and the chapters pop in expert jabs, two or three pages at a time. The prose is visceral, as taut as his teenage linebacker protagonist. Zentner's concision is powerful, even when he depicts Jessup's struggle simply to avoid trouble: "And now Jessup has to decide: beat Corson's ass or walk away. Cop car right there. High school parking lot and all comes with getting in a fight. No way he'd get to play next week. Suspension at least. Probably worse. Thinks David John. Ricky. The alley. Thinks Corson's black skin. Thinks jail." Ultimately the story charts a path to redemption all but predicated by the author's foreword. As complications mount, Zentner remains true to his generous depiction of Jessup and his world, the forces that presumably engender racism. Globalization means "Made in America costs too much," and factories close. Christianity empowers bigots. The deplorables cling to their God and their guns, and we're made to see how and why. But "Copperhead" feels exculpatory. Not that the story lacks for punishment - people suffer, people die - but the significant crimes in the narrative are quite literally accidents. Zentner's impulse to turn an attack on his own family into a sustained inquiry into racial animus is admirable, but the deck is stacked with empathy. The book's depictions of bigotry are simply outshined by Jessup's heart of gold. Still, as a moral inquiry, "Copperhead" invites us to see how bigotry operates in real life. Indeed, my own reading of the novel drew correspondences not to other fictions, but rather to a pair of complementary histories: Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash" and "The History of White People," by Nell Irvin Painter. Painter's book exposes Western culture's pernicious self-seduction via imperial aesthetics and the shabby pseudoscience of race theory. And Isenberg's study of white failure in America convincingly demonstrates how racial resentments have been cynically deployed to suppress class divisions. Both books crucially demonstrate how institutional oppression perpetuates itself. They also deepen and enrich our understanding of books like "Copperhead," and maybe even of ourselves. smith henderson is the author, most recently, of "Fourth of July Creek."
Excerpts
Excerpts
T-Minus Zero He spins the wheel hard, angry. He cannot pull away from the house fast enough. The truck lurches forward. A bee-stung horse. Snow and ice spit out from under the wheels, like a curse from a teacher's mouth, like buckshot scattering through the air and bloodying the breast of a duck flushed from the water. The back end of the pickup, light and bouncy, skids wide and loose. When it happens, he feels the sound of the impact as much as he hears it: like a soda can crushed by a stomped foot. But it's two distinct sounds: the heavy thud of the boot and the gossamer crinkle of metal folding on itself. Except the sound does not come from a soda can crushed by a foot. He knows what it is immediately. He stomps hard on the brake pedal, the truck stopping as violently as it started. He sits. The stereo is loud in the stillness, so he thumbs it off, but the windshield wipers squeak, so he turns them off too and then stops the motor. It is too quiet. If everything were going to be okay, there would be a word. A voice. A sound. Something. Anything. But the only sound he can hear is an echo, a memory, the undertone that came with the thud and crumple of metal: the inevitable weakness of a body. He wishes it had simply been an empty soda can. But he knows it was a human being. He gets out of the truck. He moves as slowly as he can force himself to. He hit a deer once, more than a year ago, not long after he got the truck running, but that was different. The animal bounded out in front of him. Dumb-eyed and desperate. He barely had time to touch the brake before his fender tore open the deer's belly. When he stopped the truck and walked back to where the deer was crumpled on the shoulder, it was still alive. A sort of miracle. But the wrong sort of miracle. Guts spilled onto the asphalt, the slow sodium light of the streetlights washing everything down. The doe's breath a desperate whistle of blood. Her right hind leg scraping weakly against the ground as if she was still trying to stand. He watched her like this for a minute or two and then went back to his truck. If he'd had his hunting knife with him, he could have been merciful, but there was nothing to do other than head home to hose off the blood and gore. He had to use a pair of pliers to fish out a chunk of the doe's skin that was lodged in the creased fender. Now he walks the long way around the front of the truck, touching the hood and then looking at the memory of the deer imprinted on the front fender; the metal still bears an ugly kiss. When he has made his way around the truck, he looks. The body is ten, twenty feet behind the bed of the truck. He knows it is a person, but in the shadows and the false light coming from the house, it could be anything else. He wants it to be anything else. A soda can. A doe. But it is, and always will be, stubbornly, a dead body. Minus Ten Halloween come and gone. It's the month of November, and it is a miracle: Jessup is still playing football. The first time in forty years that Cortaca High School has made the playoffs. Jessup is a senior. Seventeen years old and big. He was athletic even when he was small, but he's grown into himself. Played all four years on varsity. Four years of snot and blood. Freshman, sophomore, junior year they got bounced before the playoffs, but this year they've only lost two games. Tonight they play Kilton Valley High. Win or go home. His cleats click and splash on the wet cement as he jogs to the stadium. Rain started in the middle of the night, and it's been near freezing all day; he could smell the coming snow before he even walked out of his house this morning. A wet bruise on the air. All day, during school, sitting in math or English, the familiar itch of game day making his knee bounce, Jessup kept looking out the window, waiting for the sky to decide it was time to turn from rain to snow. Now, with the sun down, the sky has decided on neither: sleet. But he can feel the temperature still dropping. The sleet will make the transition to water-heavy snow soon enough. He's in the middle of the pack of boys heading to the stadium. He steps off the sidewalk as they cut across the asphalt parking lot. There's a puddle of slush that the other boys jump over or dance around, but not Jessup. He's on a straight line. He's not moving for nothing. Steps right in the puddle. The icy water splashes his ankle, soaks through his sock. He doesn't care. He'll be soaked soon enough. Only a few days earlier it was warm. In Cortaca, mothers make sure that children pick Halloween costumes that can be worn with winter jackets, hats, and gloves. More years than not, the ghouls and goblins can see their breath in the air. This year, however, the jack-o'-lanterns spit shadows into a fall night that held a heat that seemed like it would last forever. Jessup's sister, Jewel, is eleven. Twelve in February. Sixth grade. Old enough to almost be too old to trick-or-treat, old enough to go with just her friends, but Jessup tagged along. Drove her into town in his truck. Walked with them but stayed on the sidewalk as they sprinted up to houses. Comfortable in his T-shirt despite the end of October. Just there to keep an eye on you, he said. I'm not asking for candy, not hitting the doorbells, Jewel, so I don't need a costume. Jewel rolling her eyes, she and her friends dressed as zombies. Zombies never go out of style, Jessup thought. He helped her with her makeup. Mom's eyeliner, ketchup for blood. By the end of the night she was sweaty from running, hopped up on sugar, and cranky, the makeup smudged. She let Jessup have all her peanut butter cups. It stayed warm like that all week. As if winter were just a rumor. At practice, the smell of falling leaves and cut grass mixed with sweat. It was hot enough that it felt like an echo of summer. Practice in full pads, but only light hitting. Lots of water breaks. Coach, mindful of the heat, wanted them fresh for the playoffs. Yesterday, during practice, the first hint of chill. And overnight, things changed. Summer gone and skipped past the crispness of fall. This is the cold drudgery of sleet. The temperature dropping. Tomorrow, Jessup knows, will be winter. Tomorrow it will be snow. Tomorrow, when he goes deer hunting, the woods will be a different world from the one that exists today. It will be ice and snow and the magic of whiteness, the crunch of his boots, the quiet hush of blanketed woods while he waits for a clear shot, for a buck with a rack worth taking. Fill the freezer with good meat they can't afford to buy. His girlfriend, Deanne, has asked to come but he's said no. The whole point isn't the hunt but the wait. The quiet. To be in the trees, alone. Nobody looking at him and thinking about Jessup's brother and his stepfather in prison. It's been four years since Ricky beat those two boys to death. Black boys. His stepfather didn't touch anybody, but he was there, and he has a history. History is everything in a town the size of Cortaca. Ricky has another sixteen years, at least, if things go well. His stepfather, David John Michaels, was supposed to serve five, but he's out early. Today. Jessup's mom drove up north this morning to bring David John back. She brought Jewel with her, since she's David John's kid. Jessup argued that Jewel shouldn't miss school, but it wasn't a real argument. The kid's only in sixth grade, and besides, she's smart as hell. Smarter than Jessup, even. Honor roll in her sleep. A day of school won't make a difference. There was never a question of Jessup going along as well. Even if he didn't have football. They're supposed to be back by now. Sitting in the stands. His stepfather up there with Jessup's mother and Jewel. They'll be expecting him to go out for dinner with them after the game. He'll do that and then head to the party and, after that, what he's really looking forward to tonight: time with his girlfriend. But tomorrow, tomorrow Jessup can be alone. Minus Nine That's tomorrow. Tonight, it's football. The sleet is starting to gather. It's the kind of cold wet that makes certain kids wish they'd picked a different sport. Cortaca High School is a mix of kids. Poor whites like Jessup living outside of Cortaca on country roads, hills, and hollers, right off county highways or buried back down dirt roads, in trailers or beaten-down houses with missing windows, sweat-equity additions finished only with Tyvek, with months or years before siding goes up. Woodstoves if you're lucky, the constant whine of a chainsaw or the thunk of a maul giving you a house warm enough to make you sweat. If you're not lucky, propane, the house at forty-five degrees all winter, balls freezing under thin blankets, sleeping with your clothes on because nobody, not even Treman Gas, will fill your propane tank on credit. The poor blacks mostly living in Cortaca proper, up in the housing complex on East Hill, East Village--Jessup calls it the Jungle, but so do all of the blacks and the poor whites, with only the rich whites calling it by the proper name, too scared to give it its due--and the rest of the poor blacks near the downtown core, old houses once proud but now subdivided into two, four, eight apartments. Only a few of the poor blacks are out in the country like Jessup, but there are enough poor whites in town that there's a lot of crossing of color lines there. The kids who aren't poor are all affiliated with Cortaca University or in that orbit. Professors' kids. Professionals'. Or just come from money. Moms available for birthday parties and carnival night during elementary school, dads who can take the day off to chaperone the middle school field trip to Hershey Park in the spring, parents who insist on honors and AP classes in high school, who know how to procure and pay for tutors when their darlings can't handle the math or Spanish or chemistry. Jessup is in the classes dominated by rich kids and doing fine, top 10 percent of his class for grades. Not valedictorian, but within spitting distance, not bad for no tutors, for playing three sports and having a part-time job, for helping to raise his sister, top 10 percent of his class something to crow about, a ticket out of here. Beat the drum and check your numbers, teachers never quite believing he can hold his own. Not with a camo hunting jacket and what everybody knows about his brother and his stepdad. Small town, small town, small town. No way for a clean slate. The Kilton Valley team comes from an hour away. Rich kids in a commuter town. There will be a few boys like Jessup on the team--everywhere, there are boys like him--but mostly the kids from Kilton Valley live in houses with epoxy-coated garage floors, four-bedroom homes with gas fireplaces used only for decoration, thermostats set to seventy-two in the winter, sixty-eight in the summer, cedar fences to keep the golden retriever in. Jessup has heard that the Kilton Valley team practices on an indoor field when the weather is bad. There will be boys on the Kilton Valley team who are already looking forward to getting home before the game has even started, thinking about warming up and drying off instead of the ritualized brutality Jessup loves. As he jogs through the parking lot, the stadium lights seem too bright for the weather. He can see fat, furious dollops of ice and rain coming in streaks. The wind has kicked up, too. It's sharp, cutting. The hit of skin on skin, helmet on skin, skin on turf is going to burn. It's going to burn now, but worse, it's going to burn later, under the hot showers. Around him, most of the other boys jogging to the field are wearing long sleeves under their pads. Not Jessup. Just his jersey. Bare arms. He wants the boys from Kilton Valley across the line to think about the cold. He wants them to think about what it means that Jessup isn't hiding from the weather, what it means that it doesn't bother him. It won't bother him. Not during the game. He accepted, long ago, that to play football is to understand pain. Both to give and to receive. It is one of the reasons he is good at what he does. Because the secret to being a linebacker is not just the willingness to punish and to accept punishment alike, but to revel in it. Excerpted from Copperhead: A Novel by Alexi Zentner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
