This Other Eden

"There were three Pauls on the shortlist this year—what are the chances? Paul Harding won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2009 debut Tinkers . This new book, his third, is a work of historical fiction inspired by the true story of Malaga, an island off the coast of Maine where former slaves made their homes alongside Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans. The self-sufficient, racially-integrated community was disbanded by the US government in 1911 when the residents were evicted in the name of public health. “Terrible how terribly good intentions turn out almost every time,” as one character observes, prophetically—and sure enough this unique, rag-tag community is soon no more. The Washington Post praised it as a “beautiful, brooding” book of “determined hope”: its “rich, unvarnished” portrait of island life is shaped by “long, cascading sentences [that] rush forward to encapsulate as much complexity as they can.” The judges said it was a “heartbreakingly beautiful” novel, noting that they were moved by Harding’s “the delicate symphony of language, land, and narrative.”"

"This Other Eden is inspired by the real-life events on Malaga Island, Maine, which, from roughly the Civil War era to 1912, was home to an interracial fishing community. After government officials inspected the island in 1911, Malaga’s 47 residents, including children, were forcibly removed, with some rehoused in institutions for the “feebleminded.” In 2010, the state of Maine offered an apology. You could imagine lots of ways a historical novel about these terrible events might be written, but none of them would give you a sense of the strange spell of This Other Eden – its dynamism, bravado and melancholy."