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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jan 2023, 224 pages
Paperback:
Jan 23, 2024, 224 pages
Book Reviewed by:
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Our First Impressions readers were fascinated by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Paul Harding's historical novel This Other Eden, with 23 out of 28 reviewers rating it four or five stars.
What it's about:
Some of the most wrenching novels are based on fact, and so it is here: this novel is inspired by the forced resettlement of the mixed-race population of a small island community in Maine at the start of the 20th century.
For craven eugenicists and greedy politicians and developers, Apple Island is a cauldron of sin. The island consists of those considered perverse: incestuous siblings and their mentally impaired children, a righteous Civil War veteran named Zachary Hand to God Proverbs who lives in a hollowed tree, the formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish-born wife with their children of various skin colors, and so on. Of course, things are bound to head south when a ...
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