Paul Harding’s Maine-based historical novel “This Other Eden,” based on Malaga Island in Maine, has been named as a National Book Award finalist.
Set on the fictional Apple Island, “This Other Eden” is based on the decades before 1912 when a small group of mixed-race people descended of former slaves and Irish immigrants lived harmoniously on the real-life Malaga Island off the coast of Phippsburg before the state forcibly removed them.
The book follows descendents of Benjamin and Patience Honey — a formerly enslaved man and his Irish wife, who are the first non-Indigenous settlers on Apple Island.
Mirroring real events, the harmony of the island community of about 20 people is broken when a white missionary and teacher comes to Apple Island.
Other fiction finalists include Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” Justin Torres’ “Blackouts,” Aaliyah Bilal’s story collection “Temple Folk,” and Hanna Pylväinen’s “The End of Drum-Time.”
BDN writer Emily Burnham contributed reporting to this story.
