The Woman Who Climbed Trees

A young bride must leave her life in India behind when she moves to Nepal with her new husband and his family in this incandescent, poignant debut novel which examines the sorrow and deep sense of loss experienced when we abandon our former selves and our dreams.

“Is this a ghost story?” Meena asked the barber’s wife who told the tale. “I don’t want to hear scary stories one night before I marry.”

“Not all ghost stories are scary,” said the barber’s wife, laughing at Meena. “Besides, we have a long time before us, and stories are little baskets to carry time away in.”

Exquisitely written, a blend of ghost stories, myths, and song, The Woman Who Climbed Trees is a haunting, deeply felt multi-generational story that illuminates the transitional nature of women’s lives and the feeling of loss they experience, as they give up one home and family to become part of another.

When she marries a man from Nepal, Meena must leave behind her family and home in India and forge a new identity in a strange place. The Woman Who Climbed Trees follows her, the women who surround her, and the daughter she eventually raises, as they carefully navigate the uncertain tides of their diasporic lives. Smriti Ravindra beautifully captures these women’s pain and nostalgia for the past–of a country left behind, of innocence lost, of a former self, of dreams forsaken.