This Other Eden: Part 1 Summary & Analysis

In 1793, Benjamin Honey is a formerly enslaved Black man who doesn’t know where he’s from and doesn’t tell anyone whether he was freed from slavery or ran away. His wife, Patience, is Irish, and the two of them settle on a deserted island not far off the coast of Maine. Benjamin is an avid seed collector, and he plants apple trees all across the island, but none of them grow.

Benjamin starts going to the mainland, using his carpentry skills to help local orchards and get advice about cultivating apple trees. He brings this knowledge and more seeds back to his island, and by 1814, he finally has his own orchard of 32 apple trees.

Time passes, and in 1911, Esther Honey, the great-granddaughter of Benjamin and Patience, still lives in a cabin on the place known as Apple Island. It’s a snowy day, and she sits on her rocker by the stove with her 8-year-old granddaughter, Charlotte, on her lap. Nearby, Eha (Esther’s son and Charlotte’s father) adds wooden shingles to the stove. Eha’s 15-year-old son, Ethan, and his 10-year-old daughter, Tabitha, are also in the room. Ethan sits in the corner looking pale and cold as he reads an old newspaper that he got from Matthew Diamond.

Tabitha plays with the cat, Victor, and asks Esther to tell them the story of the flood again. The other children agree they want to hear it. Esther begins to tell the story of the flood of 1815, almost a hundred years ago.

In September 1815, 22 years after Benjamin and Patience settled on the island, a hurricane struck. By then, more people had come to settle on the island, bringing the population to around 30. The hurricane is intense, killing several people and animals before it’s over. Shortly after the storm begins, Patience pulls Benjamin out of their house, just moments before the wind takes the house away. The two of them go to take shelter by climbing the tallest tree on the island. There, Benjamin gathers all his children and grandchildren, until the Honeys are all in a tree. All of a sudden, a big mass of water and debris heads right for the tree, knocking the tree over and taking the Honeys with it.

With all the Honeys on the floating tree, and Patience thinks of the Biblical story of Moses parting the Red Sea. The tree lurches, and Patience, holding a baby, watches as Benjamin’s head gets pulled underwater. As the water reaches her own neck, Patience thinks of a flag she once sewed for Benjamin, which she made out of scraps of other fabric and flags. She’s currently wearing this flag around her neck, but she gets the idea to fly it.

Patience struggles against the wind to hold the flag as high as she can while also still holding the baby. The baby starts crying. The water goes up over the baby, then over Patience’s head, and then up her arm. But it stops at her wrist, right before reaching the flag. The water begins to recede. The baby is asleep. With the water still rushing like a whirlpool but beginning to lower, Patience can again see other Honeys clinging to the tree, including Benjamin. Patience loses her strength and has to let go of the tree.

Patience ends up in the mud but pulls herself out. She helps brush the mud off the baby’s face so it can breathe. Benjamin is also in the mud, and Patience can tell he’s thinking of everything he lost in the flood—so many of his relatives and all of the apple trees that took so long to grow as well. Patience tries to reassure him, saying “It’s still Apple Island.” But Benjamin feels that she’s wrong and that the wind and rain have carried away what used to be his Eden.

Back in the present, Esther has just finished the story of the flood. The children are all quiet—they know this story as well as one from the Bible, comparing the story of Apple Island to the story of Noah’s Ark. Each child gets salted cod, half a potato, and two chestnuts to celebrate the coming spring. Night falls on the first day of spring that year on Apple Island.

Aside from the Honeys, the other families on Apple Island are the McDermotts and the Larks. There’s also Annie Parker, who lives alone on the west side of island, and Zachary Hand, who lives alone on the east side of the island.

Although the Larks don’t live far from the other families, they keep to themselves. Theophilus and Candace Lark are married and claim to be cousins, but other Apple Islanders believe they may be half-siblings or even full biological siblings. Theophilus used to make a living as a fisherman and seamster (a tailor). Although he was good at fishing, when a relief society started sending food and supplies to the island, Theophilus began fishing less and became obsessed with taking care of kitchen utensils in the house.

Candace herself never liked taking care of the house, and she is relieved at first when Theophilus takes such an interest in it. But eventually, she gets bored, and she starts to fish. She finds fishing invigorating and even fantasizes about shaving her head so that she doesn’t have to deal with her hair whipping in the wind when she’s by the water.

Tabitha and Charlotte Honey sometimes play with the young Millie Lark. Millie has to watch out for her siblings, making sure that her brothers, Camper and Duke, don’t go out too deep into the ocean. She also has to stop her very thin older sister, Rabbit, from eating strange things like tree bark or starfishes.

Violet and Iris are the McDermott sisters. Like most people on the island, they are mixed race. Violet has pale skin and red hair but African-looking features, while Iris is dark-skinned but has European-looking features. They live together with Ainsley McDermott, their grandfather, in a cabin that was originally part of an old schooner. The sisters make a living doing laundry.

Neither Violet nor Iris ever marries, in part because there are no men on the island of the right age. The one time a man did take an interest in one of the sisters and tried to sneak up toward their cabin, Iris hit him in the head with a flatiron. Together, the two sisters care for the Sockalexis children (Norma Sockalexis, Emily, and Scotty), who came to the island five years earlier in 1906 with their mother, Cheryl. Violet initially didn’t trust Cheryl and the kids because they’re American Indians and Cheryl seemed to be unmarried, but Iris convinced her to trust Cheryl. But Cheryl only helped them with laundry for two months before disappearing from the island, leaving her children behind.

Zachary Hand’s full name is Zachary Hand to God Proverbs. He spends most of the warmer months living in a hollow tree. No one knows his exact age, but he seems to be older than Esther, making him the oldest person on Apple Island. He spends much of his time carving scenes from the Bible onto his oak tree. His carvings are elaborate and full of fine details. The Proverbs sisters, Zachary Hand’s nieces, sometimes try to get him to visit on Sundays. But he doesn’t like to leave his tree.

Three dogs live on the island. They have no owners and eat scraps from everyone. People mostly only give scraps that are inedible to humans, since there are many freezing days and nights on the island that lead to little food.

On June 20th, Matthew Diamond comes to his summer home at Foxden, right across the channel from Apple Island, and raises an American flag in his yard. Although everyone greets Matthew Diamond when he comes, Esther has never trusted him because he’s fully white. She doesn’t like white men because she hated her father, who was fully white (or at least looked fully white).

Esther loves summer, but Matthew Diamond’s regular arrival every summer to his home on the mainland have also made her fear summers. She figures Matthew Diamond is probably a nice man, but she still can’t help feeling physically disturbed by his presence. Matthew Diamond tells the Apple Islanders that with the help of the relief society, he’s going to build a school, where he’ll teach subjects like math, grammar, geography, Latin, and even art.

August comes, and the ocean by the island is calm. Tabitha plucks flowers in the morning. Eha watches Matthew Diamond’s pale children playing in the yard across the channel on the mainland.

Across the ocean in London, the first international congress on eugenics is taking place. The new concept of eugenics informs how the people of Foxden (the nearest mainland town) think about the residents of Apple Island. Matthew Diamond believes that God made all men equal but writes that he can’t help feeling “a visceral, involuntary repulsion” around Black people. He wants to teach the children of Apple Island about great culture and history like Shakespeare and the Declaration of Independence.

The Apple Island children come to learn in Matthew Diamond’s schoolhouse, but he forbids them from entering his own room, to avoid bed bugs and lice. He’s surprised to learn that Esther can already read and even knows some Shakespeare, but she recoils whenever he talks to her.

Millie is the only Lark child to go to school regularly. When Rabbit comes to school, she tries to eat chalk. Matthew Diamond tries to give her an apple to eat instead, but she chokes on it and has to spit it out before eating it again.

A committee from the Governor’s Council that includes three councilors, a secretary, a surgeon, and a phrenologist comes to inspect Apple Island. The phrenologist has a particular interest in inbreeding. Matthew Diamond comes with them as they go house to house. Iris and Violet initially resist the committee members, but Matthew Diamond encourages them to be calm. They still resist until one of the committee members pulls out a pistol. They finally give in and allow the doctors to inspect the children using calipers.

Matthew Diamond thinks the doctors are treating the Apple Islanders like livestock the way they measure them. The committee moves on to the Honeys, and Esther holds back the urge to scream the whole time. Bernard Richardson, a photographer, takes a picture of the whole class at Matthew Diamond’s school. Norma Clearland, a widow and journalist, interviews Matthew about his school. After the investigation is over, the committee leaves.

In her newspaper article, Norma Clearland describes the Apple Islanders as “homeless” and writes that they have become wards of the state due to their extreme poverty. The only part of the island she praises is Matthew Diamond’s school. Two weeks later, Matthew Diamond receives the photograph of the class from his school taken by Bernard Richardson. Four weeks later, Bernard’s photo portraits begin appearing on postcards. He is dismayed to see his photos sometimes appearing with dirty jokes as captions.

In school, Ethan reveals a talent for drawing. He begins to draw in his free time when he’s done with his chores. He daydreams about the Bible stories that Matthew Diamond teaches him in school, then he draws them. One night, Ethan comes down with a fever. Eha, his father, wakes up the next morning and sees how sweaty Ethan is.

An act gets passed in Foxden prohibiting any of the Apple Islanders from having children on the grounds that they are unfit to be parents. Back on the island, Matthew Diamond gives religious sermons on Sunday in the schoolhouse to both children and adults. These sermons are more abstract than his school lessons, further inspiring Ethan’s imagination after he feels well enough to return to school. Matthew Diamond speculates about how, in the Biblical story of the flood, Noah’s own family may have been mixed race with people of different skin colors. Esther still can’t shake her distrust of Matthew Diamond, but she’s fascinated by his stories.

After the lesson about Noah, Matthew Diamond noticed the strange effect it had on his audience and remains worried when he thinks about it. He writes a letter to his friend Thomas Hale. In the letter, he writes about how he believes the state will try to break up Apple Island. He recommends that, because the islanders will have to find new places to go, perhaps Ethan could stay with Hale because he is a promising young artist who would enjoy the landscape near Hale’s home in Massachusetts and could potentially even take classes at a local art college. Matthew Diamond mentions that some of the other children have demonstrated various talents too.

One day at dawn, Esther watches from her rocker as Ethan, Tabitha, and Charlotte dig for clams. They remove the meat from the shells, and Ethan gets the idea that he’d like to draw the discarded shells. This confuses Tabitha, who just sees the shells as trash.

Eventually, Esther is too old to go out gathering berries, mushrooms, and herbs. The other women in town go out instead to gather them, along with Theophilus, who is an “honorary member” in the group of women and even goes out wearing his mother’s dress.

Ethan studies a painting book that the relief society sent. The book says a painter must never flatter his subject by making it appear more beautiful than it really is. From a ledge on a bluff, he watches the women as they pick berries. He likes to come to this ledge to draw. He sees that while they’re supposed to be picking berries, Charlotte and Tabitha go out into the water of the channel. They’re out too deep but manage to make it back with the help of Grizzly, one of the local dogs. Ethan draws his sisters in the water, but by then, they have made it back to the shore.

From her chair, Esther watches Charlotte, Tabitha, and Ethan by the channel. She thinks about how happy they look. None of them think about what the doctors’ recent visit to the island might mean. Esther recalls how when she gave birth to Eha (the children’s father), she initially wanted to drown him and even took him to the river to do so. Eha’s father was Esther’s own father, making him the result of incest. Still, as Esther was drowning Eha, she saw some of herself in him and stopped.

Zachary Hand takes a job on the mainland fixing the front steps of an old friend’s house. When he comes back, he sees, Charlotte, Tabitha, and Ethan, and comments that the girls look half-drowned. They say they’re fine. They give him some mushrooms because mushrooms are his favorite.

Many years ago, Zachary Hand witnesses Esther in the process of nearly drowning Eha. He sees her lying by the water with the baby, and so he carries her to the shack of his friend Grant Howden. He tells Grant to heat some water for them.

Still in the past, Esther wakes at midnight next to the infant Eha. Her whole body hurts. She sneaks out toward the ocean and finds her father standing by the edge of the bluff. He doesn’t notice her, so she comes up behind him and pushes him over the edge of the bluff, nearly falling over herself. The fall kills him.

A year after the Governor’s Council first visited Apple Island, Matthew Diamond comes to see Eha in the Honey shack. He waits for a long time for Eha’s response about whether Ethan can go away to paint. At last, Eha smiles and agrees to let Ethan go.

The Apple Islanders all prepare a banquet for Ethan three days before he leaves for Massachusetts. Iris and Violet bring him cream and milk, and Matthew Diamond obtains fresh bread to give as a gift. Around seven in the evening, everyone gets together for a meal. Matthew Diamond makes a speech to congratulate Ethan. They all feast on tender lobsters with melted butter, along with local mushrooms and berries. The Apple Islanders are so used to nearly starving that they are astounded by this abundant meal.

Ethan wakes the next day with a slight headache from the beer he had at the banquet. For the first time, he draws a self-portrait, and he’s surprised how boyish he looks. He begins to panic about leaving the island. He draws three more portraits of himself until finally one of them feels accurate. He hides the drawings in his shirt.

The day before Ethan leaves, Esther delouses him with kerosene. He complains that it stings, but she says that’s a sign that it’s working. She tells him to make beautiful pictures for her, and he promises he will. She removes the last nit from his hair and goes to rinse her hands in a bucket of ocean water. That night, Ethan sleeps outside, listening to the sounds of nature around him like crickets and a mother owl.