This is the second book of the Booker Prize Short List I’ve read in my rush to get them read by November 26 Paul Harding is also the author of Tinkers which won the Pulitzer and I read back in 2010 or so. I and the the book buds from a a now defunct reading group so admired that novel. He wrote one book between the two, Enos, which  explores the descendants of Tinkers’ main character. 

This Other Eden 
by Paul Harding 
Jan 2023 (202 pages) 
Read by Edoardo Ballerini 6h 8m
Rating: 9.5   /historical fiction 
(both read and listened)

Now his new book, The Other Eden, has been Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize (to be announced 11/26)  as well as the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction (tba 11/15). .Both The Other Eden and Tinkers are slim volumes, novellas really, with The Other Eden weighing in at a mere 202 pages and Tinkers with only 191 pages.  (Fwiw, there’s a leather-bound version of Tinkers available at Amazon.)   Looking up the information on Harding at Wikipedia, I see he worked with Marilynn Robinson and Barry Unsworth and yes, I really see a strong connection to both. 

For background on the story Google “apple island Maine” and find a whole treasure trove of the history with some book reviews thrown in.  (Apple Island is Harding’s renaming of Malaga Island.  

I was only listening to the book until I get to places I wanted to hear again or to names I didn’t know exactly what the narrator was saying and it took me all of 30 minutes to break down and get the Kindle version.  I had the Audio from the library (lucky me) but I wanted to follow along with the Kindle so I could see spellings, so I could check back and reread those two lines without having “rewind.” 

The Other Eden is totally different from his prior works and it introduces all new characters. This novel is set in the 18th to 20th centuries and north a ways, on the isolated Malaga Island off the coast of Maine.

This is fiction folks – it’s closely based on a true story, but the names are usually changed and I’m sure there were things Harding did to give it a fine story arc and it’s certainly a literary rendition.

In 1782 Benjamin Honey, a formerly enslaved man, and his Irish wife Patience, whom he had met en route were looking for a place for themselves, and whatever descendants they might have, to settle.  They came upon on an isolated island which becomes, over time, one of the first integrated towns in the northeast. Along with his hopes, Benjamin was carrying tools and a variety of apple seeds so he learned how to be an orchard keeper and they named their little island Apple Island. Patience brought children into the world to feed, clothe, and comfort.
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Malaga Island: An Overview of its Cultural and Natural History

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Before long a few other families came bringing more children to clothe, feed and protect. Later, a Civil War vet named “Zachary Hand to God Proverbs” built a house in a tree, Esther Honey raised her son alone.

And the people struggled and endured hardship alongside others from other places and with many skin tones as well as many different ideas, but their own lives. Then a well-intentioned, but racist teacher comes and tries to help them in many ways. And a girl from Ireland lands a job with a nearby (off island) family but meets one of the young men. Meanwhile, Maine wants in on the tourist trade which will not be attracted to a place where an integrated (and poor!) community exists nearby.