This Other Eden Study Guide

Paul Harding grew up in Wenham, Massachusetts, where he spent a lot of time exploring the nearby woods and gained an early appreciation for nature. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 1990 until 1996, Harding played drums in the grunge band Cold Water Flat. During a break in touring, he took a writing class at Skidmore College and eventually went on to earn an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Harding published his first novel, Tinkers, in 2009. It received wide acclaim, including a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Harding’s second novel, Enon, continues the story of Tinkers, focusing on the grandson of the original protagonist. Harding returned a decade later with his third novel, This Other Eden, which also received acclaim. He currently lives with his family in Long Island, New York.

The events of This Other Eden are directly based on real-life events that happened on Malaga Island off the coast of Maine in the early 20th century (which inspired the novel’s fictional Apple Island). Harding has made clear that the novel departs significantly from actual events, and that he only used the events as a starting point for a fictional story. Nevertheless, the basic premise of the novel comes from real life—a group of mixed-race settlers were indeed peacefully living off the coast of Maine until the government evicted them. In both real history and the novel, eugenics is one of the main motivating factors behind the decision to evict the residents of the island. Eugenics, which means “good genes,” is the practice of trying to improve the genetics of a population. While eugenics arguably has ancient roots, going back to the breeding and domestication of plants and livestock, the term most often refers to a pseudoscientific movement from the late 19th century. Eugenicists in this time period distorted Charles Darwin’s scientific work on evolution to support racist concepts like white supremacy. Eugenics became the justification for racist laws in the United States and around the world, like the ones that lead to the eviction of the islanders in the novel. Eugenics eventually became part of Nazi ideology in Germany, where it served as the justification for genocide (the deliberate extermination of a group of people based on race, nationality, religion, or ethnic group). Since World War II, eugenics remains controversial, and the term is mostly used in a negative sense to criticize policies that unjustly favor one group over another. 

The most significant work that inspired This Other Eden is the Bible, which contains the original story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Although the novel is not a direct retelling of that story, Biblical imagery and symbolism shows up throughout the novel. Another noteworthy Bible story that inspired This Other Eden is Noah’s Ark, which involves an apocalyptic flood much like the one that ravages Apple Island shortly after its founding. Harding has also cited the influence of Shakespeare on his work, particularly The Tempest, a play that takes place on an isolated island. Other influences that Harding has mentioned include Herman Melville’s New England epic Moby-Dick, the autobiographical Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, and the linked short-story collection The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett. John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden, like This Other Eden, offers a 20th-century novelistic retelling of a Bible story—in this case, the story of Cain and Abel.