So he scrapped it and returned to that application story, experimenting with expanding it into a novel. As part of his application, he had to write two short stories, one of which was a version of “Tinkers.” Throughout the program, he worked on a different novel, but, in 2000, after he had graduated, Harding had a realization: The novel was terrible. It’s purely descriptive, just always asking, ‘What is it like, what is it like, what is it like?’” “You just go in there, and you just listen and look and describe. “I think of my writing as interrogative,” Harding, 55, said. Twice during a recent interview, he artfully, playfully, steadfastly dodged requests to provide a quick pitch for the novel. That is a summary of the plot Harding himself is reluctant to define the book. 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. 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. That history is at the core of Paul Harding’s new novel, “This Other Eden,” out Jan. 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. 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.

Structures on the island were nearly all destroyed, and descendants were discouraged from coming back. The eviction was a catastrophe: Eight islanders were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, according to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust.

In the 1860s, their descendants branched to Malaga, which, over the years, grew into a population of dozens of people. 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 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.

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