This Other Eden

By: Paul Harding

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

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 desperately 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 orphaned Penobscot children; Theophilus and Candace Larks and their brood of vagabond children; the prophetic Zachary Hand to God Proverbs, a Civil War veteran who lives in a hollow tree; and more. 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.

©2023 Paul Harding (P)2023 Recorded Books

Beautiful reading of a story told in a classical manner. Endearing. Tragic

A lovely telling of a tragic event. The characters become friends. Their world becomes our to care for too.

Sad

“This Other Eden” is based on historical fact: the expulsion of the impoverished mixed-race residents of an island off Maine around 1910. The novel is creative, with colorful characters and moments of joy and anguish. But I found it overimagined and overwritten. The residents of Apple Island were nothing but saintly. The mainland forces were heartless racists. Perhaps that was historically true, but a little more nuance would have helped. And the narrator, Eduardo Ballerino, who is usually one of my favorites, overacted a bit.

True and devastating yet beautiful

Story about a band of freed slaves, sad but well told by a skilled author. Read or listen to this book. We should all know about what happened off the coast of Maine in the 20th century.

History that leads better choices

Learned a lot about the terrible choices and reasons behind them and the impact on peoples lives.

Powerful, Lyrical and visually evocative..

Immediately engages the reader.senses of Sound, sight, smell, taste ad touch continually utilized to reveal the story and engage the reader.

Terrific. Heartbreaking and Poetic

Like a kinder, more compassionate Cormac McCarthy. Makes me want to learn the true history it’s based on.

V odd and distracting narration

The narrator injected in motion, where it did not belong, and he did not let the words tell the story.

Unfortunate choice of narrator

This novel is beautifully written; characters and scenes lovingly imagined and described. The writing is unfortunately not well served by the reader, whose style is theatrical and calls attention to itself.

A profound, lyrical novel

A painful, unforgettable story. But hearing Harding's novel aloud makes you feel just how gorgeous and poetic the book is.

Gorgeously written

A mind blowingly gorgeous novel! I haven’t words to describe This Other Eden except to say the writing is transcendent; the story fascinating; it is as much poetry as prose.