This novella was something I devoured in less than three hours, truly a book that I could not set down until the last page. I picked it up just on the cover alone at the used book store, and knew nothing of what I was reading until finishing. What I began to believe was that the style of the writing kept making me feel it was based partly on true events- turns out I was right.

This novella follows a preacher, Benjamin Purnell, and how he first began building his following that eventually became a thriving colony/cult back in the early 1900's. The amount of things that he and his followers dabbled in through the years was astonishing.

The novella starts with a scene of a gravedigger whom is to bury a coffin that contains a 68 year old woman, unfortunately the crudely made coffin breaks open and it is not a 68 year old woman that he sees. Deciding to put the lid back on and finishing the burial the story switches to the goings on at the colony/cult .

While it does follow only a few main characters, mainly a few young girls and how they saw things. The author is able to develop those characters very well early on in the book. There was no lacking in visualizing all those that had come there to stay and what the place had to look like.

The ending did make me gasp, as I was not quite ready for the coffin reveal for the second time. The novella is engrossing from beginning to end.

I loved that it was not all about what ended up happening in the end to this colony. It was not totally focused on accusations and media coverage (newspapers). The story had the right balance between what could have happened and what did happen without destroying the original plot. ( )

Fictionalized account of a historic event: the charismatic founder of a religious community exerts a creepy amount of influence over his followers. A great piece of Michigan history. ( )

Based on the true story of the House of David, a religious cult/compound in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Interesting premise with some lovely descriptive writing, but the resolution lacked oomph. It all just seemed to slide through my hands in the end, which may be accurate, but was very unsatisfying. ( )

The premise of this thin novella (a mere 144 pages) intrigued me. The story builds on historical facts about the House of David religious community founded in Benton Harbour, Michigan in 1903 by the roving charismatic preacher Benjamin Purnell and his wife Mary. The religious commune, which attracted members from as far away as Australia, required its members to refrain from sex, haircuts, shaving and the eating of meat in preparation for their entry into Paradise and eternal youth. The House of David operated a huge orchard and ran the successful "Springs of Eden Park" vacation spot with attractions such as a zoo, aviary, beer garden, live bands and a miniature train. The commune ran into difficulties in the 1920's when newspapers, including the Detroit Free Press, started running articles attacking Benjamin Purnell of public immorality. This story focuses on that time period when, in April 1923, a suspicious death occurred at the colony, a death that "King Benjamin" and his assistant—former teacher turned lover Cora Moon—try to cover it up.

I enjoyed the story and the manner in which it is presented, like a scrapbook compilation of pictures, newspaper quotes, snippets from court proceedings, and interspersed with flashbacks and first person narratives of various female members of the commune. The narratives are written in a sleepy, enchanting prose as if the story tellers are daydreaming, lost in a world of their musings and reflective thoughts. Even with this relaxed air, surrounded by picturesque scenery, Kasischke still manages to convey the eerie nature of the story, a commune where the founder's lechery is in direct contradiction to commune's founding principles. The fact that I knew nothing about The House of David and its history when I started reading this book did nothing to detract the interest the story held for me. ( )

While Laura Kasischke's novella, EDEN SPRINGS, is without question a beautiful and delicately wrought piece of prose, it was also a bit frustrating for me, i.e. it ended much too quickly and left too much unsaid. I know that "novella" implies brevity, but just the same, I wanted MORE of this story. I think perhaps the problem here is that Kasischke was working from the assumption that her readers already knew something about the colony of Eden Springs near Benton Harbor; that they already knew the story of Benjamin Purnell, the charismatic and apparently lecherous and unscrupulous leader of the religious group that populated this "kingdom." Well, I for one, knew very little about this slight slice of Michigan history. My only previous acquaintance with the Israelite House of David, came from a mostly pictorial piece about its regionally famous baseball team in the MICHIGAN HISTORY magazine a year or two ago. Granted, Kasischke did provide a brief bibliography at the end of her book, but that seemed a poor substitute for what could have been a much richer and more substantial book. Because the character of "King Ben" begs for a bigger stage. And all of those interesting women with which Kasischke peoples her story - what happened to all of them? I wanted to know more about some of those forced brides, the ones who had already been seduced and discarded by Purnell, and then casually assigned husbands for propriety's sake. I felt like poor Oliver Twist, holding out my bowl to Ms. Kasischke, asking, "Please, could I have some more?"

Because the details and the phrasing here are simply delicious; there's just not enough. Consider the plural anonymous point of view sprinkled here and there throughout the book - the "we" representing all the girls and young women who have been used and wronged by King Ben. Here's an example -

"Benjamin loved girls. To him, we were like fruit. To us, he was like God. He told us if we believed in him we would live forever - not just in spirit but in the flesh. When the end came, we'd have our young bodies back again, exactly as they were. Slim, unfreckled, fragrant. And it seemed more than possible. It seemed likely ..."

These delicious "fruits" of Eden Springs: Myrtle Sassman, Elsie Hoover, Cora Moon, Lena McFarlane and others - who were these women? And King Ben, in his spotless white rainment, who laughed and compared himself to Christ Himself - what was the spell he cast over them; whence came his "magic"? I wanted more.

While reading the story of Purnell and his followers I couldn't help but remember another similar story from Michigan, that of "King" James Strang, his several wives and the breakaway band of Latter Day Saints who populated Lake Michigan's Beaver Island in the nineteenth century. Is there something about Lake Michigan that attracts these strange religious cults?

So much delicious potential here. Something was indeed "rotten" in this turn-of-the-20th-century paradise as the cover so graphically implies. All the elements are here, I suppose. Maybe I'm just being greedy, but ... well, more, please. ( )