These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

In his third novel, Paul Harding reimagines Maine’s Malaga Island—a racially integrated community that forcibly removed its residents in 1912—as Apple Island, home to the descendants of a formerly enslaved man and his Irish wife who settled there some 100 years prior. Life on the island is shattered with the arrival of a missionary who takes a special interest in one resident who can pass as white while helping government powers in the “cleansing” of the rest of the community. Chaos ensues: residents are displaced, and some are even institutionalized. This Other Eden is a powerfully moving story that depicts the destruction of a home and a way of life. —Meg Zukin

Buy Now: This Other Eden on Bookshop | Amazon

More Must-Reads From TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com.

Tremor
Yellowface
Tom Lake
The Guest
All the Sinners Bleed
5 stories
EDIT POST