This Other Eden

Written by Paul Harding

Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Tinkers, a novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast.

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are poor, isolated, and often
hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.

During the tumultuous summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher turned missionary, disrupts the community’s fragile balance through his efforts to educate its children. His presence attracts the
attention of authorities on the mainland who, under the influence of the eugenics-thinking popular among progressives of the day, decide to forcibly evacuate the island, institutionalize its residents, and develop the island as a
vacation destination. Beginning with a hurricane flood reminiscent of the story of Noah’s ark, the novel ends with yet another ark.

In prose of breathtaking beauty and power, Paul Harding brings to life an unforgettable cast of characters: Iris and Violet McDermott, sisters raising three Penobscot orphans; Theophilus and Candace Larks and their brood of vagabond
children; the prophetic Zachary Hand to God Proverbs, a Civil War veteran wholives in a hollow tree; Ethan Honey, a young artist; and Bridget Carney, an Irish housemaid. A spellbinding story of resistance and survival, This Other Eden is an
enduring testament to the struggle to preserve human dignity in the face of intolerance and injustice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781705090251

Paul Harding

PAUL HARDING has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2010, he received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his debut novel, Tinkers. Harding lives in Georgetown, Massachusetts. Find him online at tinkerspulitzer.com.

Reviews for This Other Eden

[Wendy Herko · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

…oh well, interesting listen…maybe again at a later time …

[Carla Bates · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Populating history with real people and the absolute tragic song of dispossession. Beautiful book

[Lorena Guss · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a beautiful book. It is written with enormous grace and dignity

[carriewuj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4.5 So good, but kind of a tough read because the topic is a tense one. Well-written and worth pondering is what makes it do-able. It starts with a kernel of truth: Malaga Island was ‘founded’ off the coast of Maine in 1792 by formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish immigrant wife, Patience and became home to their offspring and various other misfits who found their way there, and lived peacefully, though poorly in an interracial community. In 1912, the 47 current inhabitants were forcibly removed by the Maine government and 8 of them were committed to an institution for the feeble-minded. The beautiful fiction of it is Apple Island’s renaming, the storm that swept away many of its people in the first generation and the lives of a core group of residents who live there in the book’s early 1900s present. Esther Honey, the great-granddaughter of the founder is the matriarch, holding things together with intelligence, compassion and common sense. Her son Eha, holds things together physically (carpenter/handyman) and his son, Ethan, 15 and young daughters, Tabitha, 10 and Charlotte, 8 are the hope for the future. Zachary Hand to God Proverbs is the local harmless 'crazy', but more like a prophet, inhabiting a tree he has carved with biblical story images. The McDermott sisters, Iris and Violet care for 3 children abandoned by a short-term woman resident who fled. The Lark family is a result of generations of inbreeding - Candace gave up housekeeping to go to sea and fish, while her husband Theophilus 'keeps house' with not much sense of 'clean.' Their children are like ghosts, pale and silent, and withdrawn. On the island, the poverty and conditions are fierce, but those who live there don’t really know any different. The acceptance and the loyalty of their small community for all its members is really touching and they manage to survive by sharing resources and looking out for each other. A schoolteacher/preacher, Matthew Diamond, from the mainland has made it his project to teach the children and to assist in any way possible and though he does not mind being among them, he ultimately sees them as ‘other’ and it is his ‘good intentions’ that put the island on the government’s radar and lead to the devastating outcome. Once that is in motion he does his best to ameliorate it, for example, sending Ethan to study art with an old school colleague. This ultimately makes things worse, for Ethan and the Honey family. He is lost to them, and they just have to wait out the inevitable removal. Themes of prejudice, and interdependence, as well as biblical echoes permeate this well-crafted book.

[castlelass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Based on the true story of Malaga Island (called Apple Island in this fictionalization), off the coast of Maine, the races have lived peacefully together since the 1790s, until the arrival, in the early 20th century, of a schoolteacher with good intentions. Unfortunately, his presence calls attention to this mixed-race community, and people in the eugenics movement get involved, with disastrous results. It is filled with lush descriptions of the environment, but the narrative arc is focused on the people of the island and their many inter-relationships. As may be expected by the title, there are a variety of Biblical references and is bookended by “flood and ark” allusions. It is oddly structured, and I think the elaborate paragraphs get in the way of the narrative flow. Nevertheless, I appreciated this book for its literary merit and calling attention to a mostly forgotten shameful episode in American history.

[novelcommentary · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Paul Harding’s novel is an inevitable tragedy based on the true events of Malaga Island off the coast of Maine in the early 1900s. In this reimagining, the island is called Apple Island where “Benjamin Honey—American, Bantu, Igbo—born enslaved—freed or fled at fifteen, only he ever knew—ship’s carpenter, aspiring orchardist, arrived on the island with his wife, Patience, née Raferty, Galway girl, in 1793.”
Their descendants and various other refugees found themselves a life growing apples, fishing, doing laundry for the people on the mainland , never bothering anyone.
“None of the islanders or their ancestors had ever paid taxes or had a bank account or a loan, gotten a birth certificate, marriage license, or fishing permit. They’d just lived on the island for more than a century, neither much helped nor hindered by the people on the main.”
They’re downfall started when a well meaning teacher named Matthew Diamond decides to spend his summers rowing over to the island to educate the children, to establish a school, and bring resources to the various families of the island. However, his good intentions resulted in scrutiny from the powers above, scientist who believed in eugenics, concerned busy buddies, who saw the island as a blight on their region. It is soon decided by these men in charge that the inhabitants of the island should be taken away as if for their own good, much the way our early settlers tried to take the Indian out of the Native Americans. When Matthew Diamond inevitably sees where this is headed, he manages to get one brilliant artist named Ethan Honey away from the island and sent to a wealthy benefactor so that he could pursue his painting and receive a proper education befitting of his talents. He meets an Irish servant girl and their story becomes the middle part of the novel.
The author chooses to Intersperse current day plaques and informational photograph descriptions that are part of a museum, reflecting on this community and the tragedy that Maine has now apologized for. We know how this novel ends, but Harding’s descriptions, most especially his long picturesque sentences, make for a compelling read.
The nobility of these proud people stay with you a long time .

Lines

He remembered being in an orchard as a child, although not where or when, with his mother, or with a woman whose face over the years had become what he pictured as his mother’s, and he remembered the fragrance of the trees and their fruit. The memory became a vision of the garden to which he meant to return. No mystery, it was Eden.

Benjamin Honey kept an orchard of thirty-two apple trees that began to bear fruit in the late summer of 1814, a decade after he planted them. Pippins were perfect for pies, Woodpeckers for cider. Children bit sour Greenings on dares and laughed at one another when their eyes watered and mouths puckered. Russets were best straight from the tree.

Benjamin Honey surveyed his orchard in the cooling air and sharpening, iridescent, ocean-bent sunset light, the greens and purples deepening from their radiant flat day-bright into catacombs of shadowed fruit and limb and leaf.

Snow poured from the sky. Wind scoured the island and smacked the windows like giant hands and kicked the door like a giant heel and banked the snow up the north side of the shack until it reached the roof. The island a granite pebble in the frigid Atlantic shallows, the clouds so low their bellies scraped on the tip of the Penobscot pine at the top of the bluff.

The more good he tries to do, the more outside attention he’ll bring, and that’s no good. No good at all.

The islanders were so used to diets of wind and fog, to meals of slow-roasted sunshine and poached storm clouds, so used to devouring sautéed shadows and broiled echoes; they found themselves stupefied by such an abundance of food and drink. For that evening it seemed to them as if they were sending Ethan off on all their behalves. And it seemed as if by sending him off to paint his beautiful pictures they all might somehow unhouse homelessness, might somehow bankrupt poverty. It seemed to all of them that evening as if they somehow might even starve hunger itself.

She expected looking at the portrait would be like looking into the mirror, but she came around the easel and saw the painted girl and it was like a mallet striking her heart and like her heart was a bronze gong inside her ribs and its sounding somehow unstrung and remade her. She did not see herself.

[bodachliath · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

This is my favourite of the five books I have read so far from this year's longlist, at least as an enjoyable reading experience, though there is nothing especially innovative or original about the storytelling. The premise is striking, and is loosely based on a true story of an isolated island community that failed to survive contact with the modern (early 20th century) world and its very different values.

[eachurch-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Set in the 1910s, This Other Eden is about a mixed race community forced to leave a small island off the coast of Maine that their families have lived on for more than 100 years. By showing how great harm can come from good intentions, Harding transforms historical events into a fable about a unique community that is destroyed in a heartbreaking way. It is an empathic tale that explores what constitutes a family and what makes a life worth living. This remarkable, understated, luminous novel is well worth reading. Given the issues he explores, it would make an outstanding book club selection.

[rmarcin-630843 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Based on actual events, this story is about a multi-racial community that is changed when outsiders come in and try to impose their ideas and ideals on the community.
Apple Island is based on Malaga Island, off the coast of Maine, which was one of the first racially integrated towns in the northeastern US.
Benjamin Honey, a former slave, and his wife, who is from Ireland, come to the island to live together without fear of prejudice and persecution. Years later, their descendants are living on the island. In 1912, a schoolteacher, Matthew Diamond, comes to the island. He finds that the children are remarkably knowledgable, for ex. some are fluent in Latin, others are experts in other subjects. People on the mainland decide they need to evacuate the island.
It is a sad account of what happens when people decide their way is better, just because they don't. understand another's culture.

[muddyboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Harding is at the top of his game. A unique thought provoking novel about a secluded island off the coast of Massachusetts where a tiny group of people (some inbreeding) have lived their for generations. There are discovered by the government which want them to leave "for their own good" A secondary story involves a young man with artistic talent leaves to launch a career on the mainland.The book brings up of government interference and this small group's freedom and right to exist as they seem happy.

[vive_livre · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm of mixed minds on this. The writing is exceptional in places and evocative but it's almost too much at times. I started out thinking the scenerio was novel and interesting, but my interest waned over time. Still, this is a decent book...a mixture of history and imagination.

[creighley_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast. In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irishwife, Patience, discover an island where they can ,ale a life together. I’ver a century later, theHoneys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland. In the summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher turned missionary, disrupts the community’s fragile balance through his efforts to educate its children.

[technodiabla · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this in audiobook format.

This novel presents a fictionalized account of the last inhabitants of Malaga Island off the coast of Maine. They were a mixed-race fully integrated society that lived a rustic, communal lifestyle until the government evicted them to build a resort. I was not aware of this horrific part of American History and the details are deeply disturbing, especially since they happened here in the 20th century. The writing was pastoral and full of Biblical imagery and Edoardo Ballerina (the narrator) is wonderful. I did have trouble keeping the characters and their relationships to other another straight, but it hardly matters for the plot. A good, short read.

[pdebolt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This beautifully written book is an homage to the people of Apple Island, a fictitious place based on the true story of Malaga Island. This small island, settled in 1792, by a mixed-race couple was in existence until 1912 when its inhabitants were forcibly evacuated. The study of eugenics by those in power in Maine determined that they should be relocated, some to the Maine School for the "Feeble Minded." These were multi-racial people who had lived on the island for generations surviving through sheer tenacity, a love of the island and their community.

I couldn't help thinking about the indigenous people who were deemed better off living as the Caucasian invaders took their land and relocated many. It is a sad fact that our history demonstrates this bigotry and prejudice. I love the history of the people of Apple Island, who neither harmed nor judged each other. Paul Harding's writing is exquisite.

[maryreinert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written, this is the story of an island off the coast of Maine that was inhabited in the late 1700's by a multi-racial group of people without education and with very primitive ways. Benjamin Honey, a former enslaved person, and his wife from Ireland found the island and raised their children there. There are other "families" some formed by incest. Their ways are primitive, yet there is a deep bond between all of them and everyone seems pretty much accepted as who they are.

In the early 1900's, a young man determined to bring education to the island disrupts this harmony. Matthew Diamond has a certain respect for these people in spite of being very prejudiced to the black individuals. His efforts come to the attention of the authorities in Maine who decide it is time to rid the island of these people and break up their way of life.

The book is sad, funny in places, but always beautifully written and each character is portrayed with respect. This is based on a real island off the coast of Maine that was cleared out of all the people. There has been some controversy among the descendants of these people regarding the telling of the story. Still a good read. Won the Pulitizer Prize.

[megacool24 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I didn't like this book very much. I felt like it reinforced rather than challenged stereotypes. The omniscient third person narrator's perspective felt uncomfortably close to that of the eugenicist antagonists.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island as an imagined, somewhat simplistic, utopia and is skillfully written in a mellifluous and poetic style, giving it a complete personality of its own. While based on a real place and events, I do not consider it an historical novel but rather more speculative in nature.

The book requires concentration and focus despite being brief (just over 200 pages), yet it covers multiple characters and time periods. There are references to eugenics that was a popular movement during the beginning of the twentieth century which were definitely upsetting, yet they were necessary to the story and to present the real temper of the times. The effect on the primary characters in these passages was devastating, but the narrative voice handled the main characters with kindness and respect. I was drawn into its setting and era and discovered that I was moved by an emotional connection to the people living on Apple Island.

While I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to discerning readers, especially those interested in the social history of the period, mainly because it has such a deep concept, exquisite details, and lovely prose.

[japaul22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am often not drawn to books on the Booker prize list, but the subject of this one caught my eye. It's loosely based on a real place, Malaga Island. In Harding's novel, the island is Apple Island, settled in the late 1700s by a motley group of people who find there way there over the 1800s - a mix of escaped slaves, Penobscot Native Americans, the Irish, and others. They aren't exactly thriving when a pastor from the mainland starts visiting them. They are hungry, cold, uneducated by modern standards, one of them lives in a tree, there has been a lot of inter-marry in a small genetic pool. But even so, the pastor, Michael Diamond, finds glimmers of greatness - a girl who learns Latin with ease and a young man with real artistic talent.

But, the island draws the attention of the government and they decide it's time to civilize this island. It doesn't take much imagination to guess what will happen to the residents.

I liked this. It has a memorable cast of characters. I also liked how it flipped my view of the island. Really, at the beginning I was not impressed with how these people were living. They were in poor health, practically starving, one living in a tree! But by the end, I was convinced they had it right, and the life they'd built there was one they should be allowed to continue.

Recommended.

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time. Heartbreaking when prejudice prevents you from seeing and knowing your fellow humans. Hopeful because truly unconditional love and family are powerful. Harding's beautiful prose, especially about the natural world illuminates this novel based the story of Malaga Island in Maine.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paul Harding's Booker Prize-nominated novel tells the story of the residents of a small island who have lived for generations, keeping to themselves, until it was decided on the mainland that something had to be done. The islanders are a diverse group, which further awakens the concerns of the mainlanders. Set in 1917, when eugenics was the new, exciting science that would result in a healthier population, when people deemed to be substandard were quietly sent to live in asylums where the could be prevented from procreating, the denizens of Apple Island subsist on foraging and taking in laundry or small jobs on the mainland. They live in poverty, but what that means for each household is different. Various municipal groups visit and decisions are made, utterly without any input from the islanders themselves, who view the visitors as an intrusion to be borne.

The story eventually focuses on one teenage boy with a skill for drawing. When the plans are being discussed to clear the island, the teacher manages to find a place for Ethan Honey on the mainland, where he can prepare to enter art school. His experiences away from home include meeting an Irish housemaid.

The characters in this book are certainly colorful and Harding juxtaposes the good and bad parts of this community. His narrative covers a relatively short span of time and is told in a straightforward style, and the writing is lovely. I liked this quiet novel, but it's inclusion on the Booker shortlist puzzles me.

[msf59 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Apple Island is a small Island off the coast of New England. Its inhabitants are a mixed-raced community, that have survived here for several generations. In 1912, a group of eugenics-minded state officials arrive to cleanse the island of these poor, misguided misfits. The prose is beautiful throughout, despite the heart-breaking story. It is based on a true story and fans of Geraldine Brooks and Emma Donaghue will find this rewarding.

[vancouverdeb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sad story inspired by historical events that took place on a small island in the USA called Malaga .

In 1792, a formerly enslaved black man, and his caucasian wife, Patience Rafferty, arrive on " Apple Island". Over the years, they have descendants, and other people arrive. It is a mixed race island, where people live in poverty, but in relative peace. These include Theo and Candace Lark, likely brother and sister, and their children. The McDermott sisters, Violet and Iris, survive by taking in laundry and fostering children, orphans of a Native American woman. Zachary Hand to God is a civil war veteran.

A missionary, Matthew Diamond, arrives to assist the Islanders with the education of the children. P. 93 " he is sickened by his incurable aversion to help these people he truly believes he is ordained to help."

Soon after, a committee from the Governor's Council arrive to inspect the settlement and the residents of the Island. Afterwards, an announcement appears in the Foxden Newspaper . " Homeless Apple Island Residents made wards of the State: Queer Squatters deemed degenerate, in need of assistance. "

A dark and disturbing read.

[labfs39 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Benjamin Honey settled on Apple Island in the late 1790s with his Irish wife, Patience. Although his exact history is unclear to his descendants, he was probably a formerly enslaved person. The two eked out a subsistence existence on the 42-acre island, but little more. Although other families join them, over time the island becomes more and more insular with the families intermarrying. By the early 1900s, there are only three families and two individuals left on the island. When the schoolmaster, who has taken it upon himself to teach the children on the island every summer, brings unwanted outside attention to the island and its inhabitants, disaster ensues.

I am having a hard time writing this review, because I wish everyone could have the experience of being drawn into this world without preconceptions. It is historical fiction, a modern retelling of Noah, an exposé of a terrible incident in Maine history, and a wonderfully-written story about a family and the price they pay for their differences. I loved the characters and the writing, and I have since gone on to learn more about the real Malaga Island and what happened there. Highly recommended.

[jo_lafaith · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

‘This Other Eden’ by Paul Harding, ticks all of my buzzwords when it comes to historical fiction; it’s set on a remote island with a close knit community, it has themes of otherness, as well as race, humanity, and shows the ways outside perception attempts to remove the meaning in — and of — the lives of those they’ve come to “save”. There is biblical imagery, specifically in terms of “the flood” but also mention of Ovid’s work and Shakespeare. Something Paul Harding does and something I’ve loved in other author’s works (Maggie O’Farrell) is to add known historical fact to the narrative. It adds a level of realism that makes the unfolding all the more impactful. Additionally, Harding’s writing is beautiful. He has a kind of sweeping style that often uses simple language that builds in a way that paints a moment in layers. I found myself so moved.

Of the islanders I was most invested in Esther, one of the oldest living residents of the island, and her grandson, Ethan. Esther has a complicated and violent history, she loves Shakespeare and is intelligent and wise. She’s seen so much, too much, of life and the people who inhabit it, and she has a steadfast spirit that makes her feel powerful, no matter what befalls the islanders. Ethan is fascinating, as well. He’s a painter and the scenes that described his painting or the way he viewed people, plants and animals, was lovely. He is sent away, off the island, to the mainland as what is described as an opportunity… but is that possible?

The people on the island descended from a Black man and an Irish woman. And the community has suffered inbreeding and poverty. All of the people look different. Some look “nearly white” while others seem “drained of color”, others are in a spectrum of brown skin tones. Outsiders are repulsed by what they see as less-than human. Even the school teacher is rattled by his own revulsion. And yet he finds them to be intelligent, interesting, eager, loving, kind, hard working. But seeing their value is not enough to eradicate his fear and bias. So often the perceptions of these “saviors” (as they think of themselves) is rooted not necessarily in hatred, but rather a very real fear. And this fear is more dangerous than anything.

I was lucky enough to read this arc physically, but to ALSO experience the audiobook, via NetGalley and RB Media (Recorded Books). It is narrated by Eduardo Ballerini, a talented actor, who lends that talent to this storytelling in a way that was, quite frankly, perfect. He really takes the storytelling up a notch and has a subtlety that comes across, beautifully. I loved listening to him.

This book is sad, to put it simply. But it’s also tender and has a grounded warmth. Knowing these characters meant something to me, and I think so many people will feel the same. I’m so grateful to have read this wonderful novel, and discovered Paul Harding’s immense, empathetic talent.

+ Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for the audiobook arc of this novel.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel is loosely based on the true story of Malaga island, one of the first integrated communities in New England. Called Apple Island here, it was first settled in the late 18th century by Benjamin Honey, a former slave, and his Irish wife, Patience. The island became a haven for an assortment of people, both black and white, looking to get away from life on the mainland and its expectations, class consciousness and prejudice. The Honeys and their descendants and neighbors have lived off the land and the sea in peaceful poverty for more than 120 years until "progress" hits, first in the form of a white preacher, Matthew Diamond, who decides to educate the children (many of whom are the progeny of incest), then in the form of entrepreneurs from the mainland who decide that Apple Island would make an ideal vacation resort.

Diamond discovers that while some of the children (as might be expected) are mentally deficient, others are quite talented, including a Native American girl who soon surpasses his own math skills and Ethan Honey, a young boy with unusual artistic talent. Diamond is conflicted in his attitude towards the Apple Islanders: he is ashamed of his repulsion for the Black adults but believes that education can better the lives of the children--especially those who, like Ethan, could pass for white. When the mainlanders send scientists and doctors to measure heads, record physical features and assess mental capabilities as a prelude to removing the inhabitants and clearing the way for their plans, Diamond decides to "save" Ethan by getting a friend in Massachusetts to foster his talents, giving him a place to stay over the summer and a seat at an art school in the fall term.

As you can expect, all did not go well for the Apple Islanders, nor even for Ethan. The most positive notes are the community's love of their island, their acceptance of one another, and the way they all have each others' backs. Harding's descriptions of the natural world are quite beautiful, and he gives us a roster of unforgettable characters. Overall, a lovely, sad, but achingly hopeful book.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Terrible how terribly good intentions turn out almost every time.

from This Other Eden by Paul Harding
“Malaga Island was home to a mixed-race fishing community from the mid-1800s to 1912, when the state of Maine evicted 47 residents from their homes and exhumed and relocated their buried dead. Eight islanders were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded.” from Maine Coast Heritage Trust, quoted in This Other Eden

The novel opens with the riveting story of a terrible storm washing over a small island off the coast of Maine, with a family clinging to the branches of a large tree and watching houses and people caught in the angry waters in the flood below. The Eden that Benjamin Honey had built was destroyed in 1815. His wife Esther tells the tale to her grandchildren, the history of their Ark island.

The Honey family had lived there for six generations, since an African ex-slave Civil War veteran and his Irish wife settled there. Their neighbors included the Larks with their colorless children, and the McDermott sisters who took in three orphaned Native American children, and the spinster Annie Parker, and Civil War veteran Zachary Hand who preferred his hollow tree to his cabin. The mixed races of the families had produced individuals of every type, the pale and the dark, green eyes and red hair, straight hair and tightly curled.

It’s a harsh life but they have survived. Theirs is a tolerant society where brother and sister raise their children, and a man can don his mother’s dress to keep house while his wife cuts her hair and goes fishing on the ocean.

The state sent a pastor to open a school. The community is Christian, the Bible and Shakespeare among the few, tattered books in the community. The teacher discovered a girl who is a mathematical prodigy, a boy who masters Latin, and another who is a gifted, untrained artist.

The Eugenics movement was at its height. The islanders were disturbing. They were measured and assessed, labeled and judged to be degenerate by the “plain white” of the mainland. The mixing of races, the intermixing of blood, could not produce anything but imbeciles, morons, and degenerates.

The entire population of Apple Island was relocated, many to institutions.

The early book takes us into these people’s lives and personalities. Yes, there are relationships that we judge to be perverse. There are people whose sanity we may doubt. A girl who only eats wild things she finds, starfish and snakes. One woman was abused by her father, and intended to murder the resultant child. She was prevented, and her child and his children became the center of her old age. Zachary Hand carves images in his hollow tree where he finds peace. But we have sympathy for these people. They are removed from the world and a society that could not have accepted them, eking out a subsistence life, doing the best they could with what they had.

The teacher determines to ‘save’ one child of the island, a fifteen-year-old boy with straight hair and and greenish eyes. He writes an acquaintance, hoping he would take the boy in until he could enter art school. It seemed a mercy to separate Ethan Honey from his family’s fate, to allow him access to white society.

For all his good intentions, the teacher creates a series of disastrous events. Years in the future, historians will explore the buried history of the deserted island, and write about the paintings and drawings of the mysterious Ethan Honey.

Beautifully written, with stunning descriptive passages and a mounting urgency, this is a novel of history and a vision of what society could have become, a condemnation and a warning.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

[kcshankd · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I wanted more, which is a fine result for any novel. Spare as Apple Island, giving us just enough to move the story forward.

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Esther Honey is the matriarch of this island community. And Harding gives her a mystical prophetic quality. “Terrible how terribly good intentions turn out almost every time,” she muses and “no good ever came of being noticed by mainlanders.” These words haunt Harding’s fictional account of the dark historical¬ event that took place on an island off the coast of Maine in 1912—the forcible displacement of a peaceable mixed-race community. The state justified this travesty as a public health measure, but, in fact, it was based on faulty scientific and moral thinking along with suspicions of commercial greed. At bottom, however, the main driver always was racism.

Harding depicts the islanders as flawed, but basically innocent and loving. Despite hunger and extreme poverty, they evince close ties to family, nature, art, education, and especially their home. Esther spends her time rocking and observing events while remembering an intensely troubling relationship with her dead White father. Her son, Eha, functions as an island handyman while also caring for his mother and his three children. His son, Ethan, is a central figure in the narrative for two main reasons: he is a gifted artist and can pass as a White. The Larks are a strange lot¬. Theophilus and Candace are siblings but live as husband and wife in a role reversal. Their four children are almost feral, roaming the island at night. Iris and Violet McDermott take in washing as well as two abandoned native-American children. Zachary Hand of God Proverb is especially “queer.” He is a Union Army veteran who spends his time in a hollow tree carving scenes from the bible. Not to be outdone by the humans, three highly distinctive dogs fill out the cast of characters.

Their strangeness notwithstanding, the islanders are oblivious to how they are viewed by the outside. The mainlanders see them as degenerate and queer. Rumors of incest and infanticide persist. Their racial makeup is indeed eclectic and thus troubling to a state living in the thrall of eugenics. Harding refers to the community as a “distillate of Angolan fathers and Scottish grandpas, Irish mothers and Congolese grannies, Cape Verdean uncles and Penobscot aunts, cousins from Dingle, Glasgow, and Montserrat.”

Matthew Diamond, a White missionary, and volunteer schoolteacher, sponsors a visit to the island by a governmental committee and thus unwittingly initiates the ultimate decision to remove the community and burn down its buildings. Diamond is a conflicted character. His self-image is as of a caring person yet he holds deep-seated racist feelings, especially toward Black people. Remarkably, he notices that several of the children are gifted, nonetheless the only one he moves to save from displacement is Ethan, who can easily pass as White.

Harding deftly uses biblical imagery to bolster the view that the islanders were treated unjustly. Their founding story congers the flood. The use of apples as a key image for the island recalls the Eden myth. The expulsion of the islanders by heartless governmental bureaucrats brings to mind the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden by a vengeful God. Esther and Zachary as biblical prophets and Ethan as a Christ figure in the wilderness are more subtle but also powerful biblical iconography. Moreover, Harding achieves a mythic mood by using long, complex, and lyrical sentences that stand in contrast to the underlying racism and brutality on display elsewhere in the novel.

[bumblybee-190414 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island and its inhabitants, the descendants of Benjamin and Patience Honey. Based on the true story of Malaga Island, one of the first integrated towns in the Northeast, the book follows the fate of the Honey family and Apple Island itself.

For such a short volume, it manages to capture an array of emotions. Alternating between the stories of the island's settlers and documentation from an outsider's perspective - that of the mainlanders and a future historical museum - the narrative gives the reader the feeling of being part of the islanders' community. Throughout the story, characters leave the island, characters arrive on the island, and well-meaning characters end up causing the upheaval of life as the islanders know it. The novel deals with social commentary in a "tell it like it is" fashion - Harding expects the reader to keep up and understand what the story is trying to communicate, and it does so in a way that doesn't make this reader feel like an idiot grasping at straws like some literary fiction can.

I'm a fan of family sagas, and this is a rich one that dives deep without becoming a tome. It's the right length for the story it wants to tell, and Harding proves that you don't need in excess of three hundred pages to write something that makes the reader feel like they really know the family and its journey.

I'm very glad I read this book - it excels at what it is trying to accomplish, and does so in a way that is moving and heartbreaking. If you too enjoy family sagas, I recommend this one for a cold winter day.

Thank you to NetGalley and W. W. Norton for providing a copy for review.