Inspired by historical events at the beginning of the twentieth century, This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island: an enclave off the coast of Maine where waves of castaways have landed and built a home.
In 1792, the formerly enslaved, aspiring orchardist Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, arrive on an island where they can make a life together. More than a century later, the Honeys’ descendants remain, along with an eccentrically diverse band of neighbors: a pair of sisters raising three Penobscot orphans; Theophilus and Candace Lark and their nocturnal brood; and the prophetic Zachary Hand to God Proverbs, a Civil War veteran who lives in a hollow tree.
Then “civilization” intrudes: officials determined to “cleanse” the island and a missionary-schoolteacher who selects one light-skinned boy to save. The rest will be left to succumb to institutions or cast themselves on the waters in a new Noah’s Ark.
In prose of transcendent beauty and power, Paul Harding’s This Other Eden explores the hopes, the dreams, and the resilience of those perceived not to fit in a world brutally intolerant of difference.
Download and start listening now!
“Ballerini’s lyrical delivery highlights the poetic descriptions of the island’s physical environment and the comfortable rhythms of daily life, bolstering listeners’ empathy for the families…His tone becomes more straightforward…[and] gruffer when white male authorities begin to disrupt and disband the community.”
—
AudioFile