A Marker to Measure Drift

April 29, 2013
Set amid the surf and hillside villages of a small Greek island, Maksik’s second novel (after You Deserve Nothing) follows new arrival Jacqueline, a Liberian woman near 20 years of age with a veiled, mysterious past. Homeless, starving, and trapped within the serene beauty of her new surroundings, she searches for shelter, taking refuge in a cave and offering massages to sunbathers for spare Euros. She is troubled by hallucinations of her mother and government employee father, but has sweet memories of her former lover, Bernard, and her younger sister, Saifa. Throughout, Jacqueline finds it difficult “to distinguish between what was happening and what had happened.” Paranoia makes her resistant to building personal connections and she moves from one location to the next on a journey that is deliberately paced and repetitive. Jacqueline’s psychological state is marked by emptiness and conflict; acceptance of charity sparks guilt, rare indulgences turn into painful stomachaches, and a series of unfinished spaces become briefly inhabited homes. Though the drawn-out mystery of this unanchored woman’s past may frustrate those in need of a more dynamic narrative, patient readers will be rewarded by Maksik’s gorgeous and evocative prose. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment.

May 15, 2013
A 23-year-old refugee from Liberia tries to escape the horrors of her past on the island of Santorini. Jacqueline arrives in Santorini with a backpack, the clothes on her back and no money. We slowly learn the details of her life through a series of flashbacks to her home and affair with a French journalist as well as through imagined conversations with her mother, a religious woman who believes in equal measure in two contradictory ideas: that everything is "God's will" and that "We pay for our sins, for the sins of others....Anyway, we can't understand." At first, Jacqueline finds a cave in which to spend her nights, and she supports herself by giving foot massages to the tourists on the beaches. This helps her make a subsistence living, though much of the time she's still uncomfortably close to starvation. She develops a routine in her living, catching showers surreptitiously and then eventually sleeping in an abandoned hotel. She also befriends Katarina, a waitress at a local cafe, who provides her food and friendship, for both women are lonely and in need of companionship. Through memory and conversation, Jacqueline's story finally comes out. While her mother had always looked for meaning through religious consolation, her father, Liberia's finance minister and a believer in the government of Charles Taylor, was simultaneously more political and more cynical. Jacqueline also has strong memories of her pregnant younger sister, Saifa. At the end of the novel, Jacqueline feels comfortable enough with Katarina to open up about the terrifying circumstances that led to her leaving Liberia. A moving, deeply felt and lyrical novel about past and present.

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March 1, 2013

Maksik follows up a successful trade paperback original, You Deserve Nothing, with an in-house favorite featuring a Liberian woman named Jacqueline, who's trying to forget untold horrors while living homeless on a Greek island. Intense reading; with a multicity tour, a reading group guide, and library marketing.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2013

Civil war leaves a young Liberian woman named Jacqueline homeless and deprived of her privilege as the daughter of one of African warlord Charles Taylor's ministers. Drifting between memories that look very much like madness and wary resourcefulness, she wanders among the tourists and vacationers on a Greek island in self-imposed exile, distracting herself from the thoughts of her catastrophic loss. Her world is reduced to locating food, water, and shelter; acts of kindness from strangers keep her going, while her memories threaten to undo her. After his praised novel You Deserve Nothing, Maksik returns with a vivid depiction of disillusionment, shock, and resilience following a civil war that killed more than 150,000 people and dispersed refugees like Jacqueline throughout the region. VERDICT A work that sheds light on a setting great in both its beauty and violence. Without being at all imitative, this title may remind readers of Chris Cleave's Little Bee in craft and the exploration of terrible brutality and the effort it takes to survive. [See Prepub Alert, 2/4/13].--Gwen Vredevoogd, Marymount Univ. Libs., Marshall, VA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.