This Other Eden a tragedy of American racism and eugenics

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On a snowy day in early spring 1911, a grandmother sits at home in a rocking chair, as a storm rages outside, telling a thrilling story to the grandchildren huddled around her . The story she tells, of a biblical hurricane that nearly destroyed an earlier branch of their family, would turn out to be a warning of the catastrophic events of Paul Hardings’ This Other Eden, set on the small, rocky Apple Island off the coast. of Maine, a granite pebble in the icy lowlands of the Atlantic.

Harding’s new novel is steeped in the shaky imagery and soaring imagination that won him the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel Tinkers (2010), but it’s based on unpleasant facts. Its Apple Island is the surrogate for Malaga Island, home to a small interracial fishing community for six generations. In 1912, government officials decided that the contented islands and largely self-sufficient residents were a problem and ordered their expulsion.

A family was interned in a school for the feeble-minded on the mainland, a traumatic experience that came to life in one of the ugliest scenes in the books. The remaining inhabitants fled, some dismantling their small clapboard houses, others were set on fire by the evictors before taking the pieces with them across the water and into history.

Terrible how terribly good intentions turn out every time, Esther Honey thinks to herself.

Racism and eugenics are a driving force in the book, as are Hardings’ lavish and detailed descriptions of Apple Island and its few families. These are the Honeys, McDermotts and Larks (most likely half-brother and sister Larks) representing the last island variety of traits inherited from African fathers and Irish mothers. There’s also the wonderfully named Zachary Hand to God Proverbs, an American Civil War veteran who lives in a hollowed-out tree.

The opening deluge of intimate knowledge about the characters in This Other Eden seems overwhelming at first. As the story continues, it becomes clear that there is a need, even urgency, to detail this way of life before it is erased for good.

The island was originally settled by a former slave, Benjamin Honey, in 1793. We learn that the descending islanders live largely on cod, clam fishing and wild mushrooms picked by children in the wood. The McDermott sisters, Violet and Iris, do laundry for single mainland farmers. Rabbit Lark, a child from another world, seems to only eat tree bark. It is an existence economically impoverished, but rich in tradition, observation, silence and camaraderie.

The intensity of Hardings’ prose, long paragraphs of looping, ecstatic sentences, sheer unconventionality of personalities, and frequent scriptural references are reminiscent of the work of Marilynne Robinson, especially her astonishing first novel Housekeeping (1980). It’s no surprise to learn that Robinson was once Hardings’ creative writing tutor. Of a lit cigarette he writes: He struck a match against the barn door and touched it to the end of his cigarette and inhaled his breath as if to draw the flame through the tobacco and the paper in his mouth and on his tongue and down. his throat, as if it were the fire itself that he wanted to fill his lungs with.

Matthew Diamond, a missionary from the mainland, initially seems like a hopeful figure. He sets up a classroom, finds talented students like Tabitha Lark, who has a gift for Latin, and Ethan Honey, who is already good at drawing. But he will prove to be the catalyst for their downfall. Terrible how awfully good intentions turn out every time, thought Esther Honey, grandmother and sagacious matriarch of Apple Island.

Sure enough, officials soon arrive in the well-meaning wake of Diamonds, measuring children’s heads, photographing families almost as an anthropological curiosity, then condemning Negro Island as polluted, portraying the islanders as squatters. Ethan’s prodigious talent is crucially encouraged by Diamond because he can pass as white to the world.

Some of the finest moments in the book come when 15-year-old Ethan has the opportunity to leave Apple Island, staying on a remote Massachusetts estate courtesy of a wealthy benefactor, in order to prepare for art school. The growing longing between Ethan and another stranger, the young Irish servant Bridget, is subtly developed, and Hardings writes about the art is exquisite. In one scene, Bridget serves Ethan ice cold lemonade. You could read a book through it. It was like crystal, he marvels. Ice cream, lemonade and the moment are transformed into meaning. Later, they will make their way into one of Ethans’ paintings.

Ethan’s time at the estate quickly loses its rosy hue. In a poignant foreshadowing earlier in the novel, he attempts his first self-portraits: four simple drawings, the last of which looks commemorative, as if copied from a statue. More like an African made to look like a European. . . he didn’t want to disappear from his family’s lives, from their memories, from their image of him in their minds.

A 21st century coda to the book makes it a novel both emblem and reality. In 2010, an official apology condemned the expulsion of the islanders from Malaga. By this time, even the bones of their ancestors had been removed and reburied elsewhere.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding, Hutchinson Heinemann 16.99, 224 pages

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