I’ve found myself reading a lot of books about war-torn Africa lately. I’m not sure if it’s a literary trend, or just the genres I’ve been gravitating towards. But at face value, Alexander Maksik’s A Marker to Measure Drift isn’t about Africa at all. 

It follows a young woman, appropriately adrift and attempting to stay afloat as she navigates the paradisiacal island of Santorini in the wake of a horribly war torn departure from her native Liberia. While you’re not sure what happened to Jacqueline until the very end of the story, suffice to say that she is certainly suffering from some form of PSTD, you are heartbroken alongside her as she wanders the white sands, as she seeks shelter in broken rock coves, forages nourishment from beach trash cans and attempts to create as much distance from her past as she can.

Jacqueline’s story is one of survival. While the reader isn’t quite what it is that she has survived, the didactic voice of her mother echoes in her head, reminding her that she is alive, and she is to remain so at all costs. Maksik writes in broken sentences, conveying the disparate and stilted manner in which Jacqueline lives each day. When she finally comes into some money from giving cheap massages on the beach, she treats herself to gyros from a gyro stand on the boardwalk. 

After reading pages of her salivating over the aromas of the charcoal plumes emanating from the revolving spit, I had to have a gyro. Jacqueline alternates between lamb and pork gyros, allowing herself to feel the luxury of choice over a meal that manages to fill her up with very little cash. 

While we don’t have a roasting spit or the luxury of open flames in our NYC home, Rohit improvised by braising a lamb shank for 2 hours in a dry white wine and tomato stock spiced with juniper berries, allspice, oregano and plenty of garlic until the meat became tender enough to fall off the bone. While gyro meat is traditionally served dry, with only hot sauce or tzatziki as accompaniment, the braising sauce was too good to forgo. So Rohit strained, pureed and returned it to the stove to reduce, whereupon he added it to the pulled lamb meat, resulting in a gyro in which I was more than happy to indulge, leaving the memories of a ravaged Liberia behind.