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.

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

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. (July 30)