Paul Harding Captures the Quiet Side of Calamity

In 1912, all the residents of a mixed-race fishing community on a small island called Malaga were evicted from their homes by the state of Maine. The area is said to have been settled about a century earlier when, in 1794, a formerly enslaved Black man, Benjamin Darling, bought nearby Horse Island and made a home there with his wife. In the 1860s, their descendants branched to Malaga, which, over the years, grew into a population of dozens of people.

The eviction was a catastrophe: Eight islanders were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, according to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. Structures on the island were nearly all destroyed, and descendants were discouraged from coming back. One hundred years later, in 2010, the governor of Maine apologized for the eviction, but the haven that once was has never been re-established. Today, Malaga is a public preserve run by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, and all that’s left of its past are graves and a schoolhouse, which have been removed from the island, and some abandoned wells.

That history is at the core of Paul Harding’s new novel, “This Other Eden,” out Jan. 24 from Norton. Instead of Malaga and the Darlings, Harding’s book tells the tale of the fictional Honey family, who, like the Darlings, are descended from a formerly enslaved man and are eventually expelled from their home, Apple Island. The novel — which closely follows a handful of Apple Islanders as well as the missionary who inadvertently brings about their downfall — is a harrowing tale of paradise lost and a lyrical examination of people in isolation just trying to get by.

That is a summary of the plot; Harding himself is reluctant to define the book. Twice during a recent interview, he artfully, playfully, steadfastly dodged requests to provide a quick pitch for the novel. “I think of my writing as interrogative,” Harding, 55, said. “You just go in there, and you just listen and look and describe. The mode can never be explanatory. There’s no thesis. There’s no argument. It’s purely descriptive, just always asking, ‘What is it like, what is it like, what is it like?’”

Instead, Harding shared what the book is not: It’s not the record of Malaga. “I’m not the person to write the history of Malaga Island; I have no organic connection to it; I didn’t grow up there,” he said. “Those people’s personal lives are not mine to take up.”

Rather, the history of Malaga provided a framework for Harding’s own novelistic imaging. “I was just thinking, it’s the week before they get evicted off the island,” Harding said, “and over the course of telling that story, it would open onto all other aspects of history and literature and etc., etc., etc.”