This Other Eden

De: Paul Harding

Narrado por: 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 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

Fantastic prose and great reading

Too much to say, but this book and the performance are ABSOLUTE GEMS! The humanity of the Islanders and the inhumanity of the invaders, the dehumanization, mirror the current dehumanization of Latin American immigrants in the United States

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.

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.

Beautiful writing

Although I could recognize the author is a gifted writer the story was such a 'downer' that if I didn't have read it for book club, I would have stopped listening. Maybe it's because so much in world news today is so confrontational and depressing, I wasn't in the mood to read how our country treated innocent people just because they are different than those in power.

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.

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.