This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Published by W. W. Norton & Company on January 24, 2023

This Other Eden is based on one of the countless dark moments in American history, the moments when the government interferes with the lives of people who are causing no harm to serve the interests of greed and intolerance. The novel is set in a time when eugenics, a pseudo-science rooted in racism, became a weapon that governments wielded against the powerless.

The novel’s Apple Island is, in the words of a woman who lived there, “a poor little island of such poor dear souls.” In a broad sense, the story parallels the tragedy of Malaga Island, an enclave of mixed-race settlers who were evicted and sometimes institutionalized under the pretext of protecting Maine from feeble minds.

Paul Harding imagines Apple Island as a place settled by Benjamin Honey, a former slave, and Patience Honey, a Galway girl, in 1793. Benjamin planted apple trees in the hope of creating a new Eden. He and Patience raised a family. By 1815, the island had thirty residents. In 1911, Esther Honey, great-granddaughter of Benjamin and Patience, tells the story of the 1815 hurricane that devastated Apple Island. She does not know that the island will soon be devastated by the government of Maine, although when it happens, the island’s fate does not surprise her. She knows that powerful white men feel the need to disturb people like her.

By 1911, Apple Island’s population consists of three extended families (the Honeys, the Larks, and the McDermotts), as well as Annie Parker, who lives alone, and Zachary Hand to God Proverbs, who spends most of his time carving biblical images inside a hollow tree. The islanders have inherited traits from “African fathers and Irish mothers, Penobscot grandmothers and Swedish grandpas.” Theophilus and Candace Lark claim to be cousins but are likely brother and sister; only four of their nine children lived. Cheryl Sockalexis (who might be a Native American) and her three children move to the island but Cheryl leaves when she feels assured that the islanders will care for her kids.

Apart from the Larks’ consensual incest, an unwelcome pregnancy caused by a father who raped his daughter plays a role in the island’s history, as does the victim’s secret vengeance. In other respects, Apple Island is just another small fishing village, not much different than mainland villages, its residents eking out lives with some help from relief supplies that rarely match their needs.

A missionary to the island, Matthew Diamond, provides instruction to the children. He is surprised that Emily Sockalexis is a math whiz, that Tabitha Honey easily learns Latin, and that Ethan Honey is a skilled artist. Matthew arranges for Ethan to live with the Hales in Massachusetts, where he might be given an opportunity to attend art school. That dream is jeopardized by Ethan’s dalliance with an Irish servant. Thomas Hale is utterly opposed to miscegenation.

Underlying the story is Maine’s embrace of eugenics and its creation of a Governor’s Commission to study and determine the fate of Apple Island residents. The white men who measure and observe the residents find them wanting. A decision is made to evict them all, sending some to an institution for the feeble minded.

The story focuses on the difficult but harmless lives of the islanders and their powerlessness in the face of a government that envisions Apple Island as a tourism destination, one that would not attract tourists if occupied by mixed-race residents. Whether they are sharp or dull and regardless of their skin color, the islanders are ultimately a collection of people who get along with each other, depend on each other, and call the island home. Apple Island is far from utopia but, unlike the mainland, it is free from racism and greed. The islanders are decent people whose lives are upended, whose roots are destroyed by men who are confident that white skin assures their moral superiority.

Harding tells a simple story with pitch-perfect prose. Compassion bleeds from his sentences. Harding’s focus on the characters channels the reader’s attention away from the larger social injustice to the impact that injustice has upon individuals. The novel’s point is that humans deserve to be treated with the dignity to which individuals are entitled. Inbreeding might have impaired some residents of Apple Island, but that harm is minor in comparison to the harm inflicted by the entitled proponents of eugenics. You don’t need to be a social justice warrior to appreciate the beauty and power of Harding’s indictment of government policies that destroy families and communities.

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Enon by Paul Harding

Published by Random House on September 10, 2013

Paul Harding displays the power of his prose in the opening pages of Enon, as Charlie Crosby recalls the death of his daughter. The understated, deeply affecting descriptions of grief set the scene for the life that follows. Charlie blames himself for letting his daughter take the bike ride that ended in a collision with a car. After Charlie's marriage disintegrates, he becomes "a maker of dismal days." He spends them wandering the town of Enon, recalling the sweetness of the family life he has lost, seeing his daughter at different ages when he gazes at the town's children. As the months pass, he moves "deeper into the shade, further toward the border between this life and what lies outside it." He is embarrassed by his weakness, his inability to resolve his sense of loss. He has always believed that "life is not something we are forced to endure, but rather something in which we are blessed to be allowed to participate," but now he feels no gratitude for a life that "felt like nothing more than a distillation of sorrow and anger." He wants to believe that the joy of his daughter's life had its own integrity, that his life is better for having shared his daughter's life, but he measures his grief by the loss of that joy. Abuse of alcohol and pills heightens his condemnation of his failure of character.

While Enon is largely an internal monologue, it features richly developed minor characters: a cemetery caretaker who seems like "an archaic military experiment gone awry"; an elderly woman who fearlessly races down an icy hill on a sled; a poorly paid clerk who pines for his family in India while he spends his Sundays working at a convenience store. It is also a novel of place, the place being Enon, where Crosbys have lived since 1840. Charlie, taking a daily walk around the town, recalls his childhood fears of creepy woods and legendary boogeymen. We learn the history of Charlie's old house with its traces of the people who once lived there, including the grandfather who was instrumental in his life.

What do we do when "broken hearts continue beating"? Is grief a moral failing when it leads to self-destructive, irresponsible behavior? Harding leaves it to the reader to decide. Charlie, on the other hand, receives a lecture from the elderly sledding woman that seems right: at some point, particularly when it causes harm to others, grief can be selfish. There is a moral lesson in Enon, a lesson that Charlie learns about the nature of prolonged grief, about what his grief really is and why he can't release it. Although it isn't immediately apparent, the novel is ultimately redemptive and life-affirming in its perspective of "this awful miracle of a planet" we all share.

Harding's description of Charlie's thoughts, his attempts and inability to come to terms with his daughter's death, are achingly real. Enon is such a howl of pain that it is difficult to read in long stretches. Fortunately, Enon is the perfect length: long enough to tell the story but not so long that Charlie's anguish becomes overbearing. Regardless of its length, Harding's prose, sometimes stunning in its effortless beauty, would have kept me reading. This isn't a novel for readers who wish to disappear into a make-believe world that's filled with sunny characters, but for readers who want to understand the full range of life (including people who have given up on life), Enon is a work of great value.

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