The Rattled Bones
Page 25
My research was intended to gather historical facts but it also illuminated a pervasive and enduring legacy of shame that is still suffered by many of the descendants of the Malaga Island community. It is my hope that my work of fiction has explored the events surrounding Malaga Island and its residents thoughtfully. I hope this story will help to inspire a generation of teen readers to research the full scope of factual events that occurred on Malaga Island. I hope that a collective effort to bring the story to light will help to lift the enduring shame of islanders being falsely labeled “feeble-minded” and “immoral.”
I am grateful for the ongoing academic and cultural interest in Malaga Island’s history and the recent articles that have appeared in Maine’s The Working Waterfront, Bangor Daily News, and Maine Sunday Telegram. These articles, along with the research being conducted by the University of Southern Maine—and the exhibit at Maine State Museum—are helping to tell the real story of the Malaga Island fishing community in a way that newspapers from the time did not.
While recent Maine governors have apologized to the families of the Malaga Island victims, it is still unsettling to know that deceased Malaga Island residents remain buried in combined graves on the grounds of the former state institution. Malaga’s families were proud fishing families whose ancestors had populated the islands throughout Casco Bay since the 1700s or earlier. It seems time to return the deceased home to Malaga, to the shores where their familial and cultural roots run deep.
Sources
Barry, William David. “The Shameful Story of Malaga Island.” Down East Magazine, November 1980: 53–56, 83–86.
C-SPAN.org. “The Evictions of Malaga Island, Maine.” (Video.) September 10, 2012. http://www.c-span.org/video/?308505-1/evictions-malaga-island-maine.
Corson, Trevor. The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
Day, Holman. “The Queer Folk of the Maine Coast.” Harper’s Magazine, September 1909, 521–530. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Harpers-1909sep-00521.
Dubrule, Deborah. “Digging for Truth Malaga Excavation Reveals the Lives of an Island’s Evicted Residents.” The Workings Waterfront, October 1, 2006.
Dubrule, Deborah. “Evicted: How the State of Maine Destroyed a ‘Different’ Island Community.” Island Journal 16 (1999): 48–53, 90–91.
Heflich, Adrienne et al. “Malaga Island: A Brief History Compiled by the Students of ES 203 Service Learning Project.” Typescript. Bowdoin College, 2003.
“Poverty, Immorality and Disease.” Bath Enterprise, March 1902.
Long, Burke O. “The Children of Malaga Island.” Bowdoin College, Summer 2015. https://research.bowdoin.edu/children-of-malaga-island/essay.
Rosenthal, Rob and Kate Philbrick. Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold. Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Portland, Maine, 2009. http://malagaislandmaine.org.
Woodward, Colin. “Malaga Island: A Century of Shame.” Portland Press Herald, May 20, 2012.
Woodward, Colin. The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier. New York: Viking, 2004.
About the Author
S. M. Parker lives on the coast of Maine with her husband and sons. She works as a literacy advocate and holds degrees from three New England universities. She can usually be found rescuing dogs, chickens, old houses, and wooden boats. She has a weakness for chocolate chip cookies and ridiculous laughter—ideally at the same time. The Girl Who Fell was her first novel.
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Notes
1. Adrienne Heflich et al., “Malaga Island: A Brief History Compiled by the Students of ES 203 Service Learning Project,” Typescript, Bowdoin College (2003).
2. Holman Day, “The Queer Folk of the Maine Coast,” Harper’s Magazine (September 1909), 521–530. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Harpers-1909sep-00521.
3. Rob Rosenthal and Kate Philbrick, Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold, (Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Portland, Maine, 2009). http://malagaislandmaine.org.
4. Colin Woodward, “Malaga Island: A Century of Shame,” Portland Press Herald (May 20, 2012).
5. Burke O. Long, “The Children of Malaga Island.” (Bowdoin College, Summer 2015). https://research.bowdoin.edu/children-of-malaga-island/essay. “What a blood endowment for the youngsters” quoted directly from source.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Text copyright © 2017 by Shannon M. Parker
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Parker, S. M., author.
Title: The rattled bones / by S. M. Parker.
Description: First Simon Pulse hardcover edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2017. |
Summary: After her father’s death, Rilla Brae puts off thoughts of college to take over his lobstering business, while helping an archaeology student excavate nearby Malaga, an uninhabited island with a ghost that beckons her. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016056047| ISBN 9781481482042 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781481482066 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Lobster fishers—Fiction. | Ghosts—Fiction. | Archaeology—Fiction. | Islands—Fiction. | Racism—Fiction. | Maine—Fiction. |
BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Legends, Myths, Fables / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Horror & Ghost Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.P366 Rat 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016056047
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