The Woman Who Climbed Trees

“Electrifying.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Meena is fourteen years old when her parents marry her to Manmohan, a twenty-one-year-old Nepali boy she has never met. As is customary in India, she must leave her childhood home—along with everything and everyone she’s ever known—to relocate to Nepal and embrace the home and identity of her husband’s family.

Manmohan is in college and spends most of the year in Kathmandu, leaving his bride alone with her demanding mother-in-law and his sister, with whom Meena gradually finds comfort and love. The Women Who Climbed Trees follows the daring and unflinching Meena as she navigates the uncertain tides of her diasporic life—and eventually the trials of her own daughter—while struggling to manage her new family’s expectations in a strange place.

Told through alternative perspectives—and blending realism, ghost stories, myths, and folktales—The Woman Who Climbed Trees lifts many taboos surrounding multicultural identity and the expectations women everywhere face in their domestic lives, while giving readers access to a world hidden behind closed doors.