The woman who climbed trees : a novel / Smriti Ravindra.

"'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"--

"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, far away from the little village Meena is confined in, leaving her alone with her demanding mother-in-law as she gradually finds comfort and love in her sister-in-law. As she navigates life in a strange place, we accompany the daring and unflinching Meena--and eventually her own daughter--while she struggles to manage her new family's expectations in the uncertain tides of her diasporic life. 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 that is usually kept behind closed doors"--