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, 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.

Blending realism, ghost stories, myths, and folktales, The Woman Who Climbed Trees accompanies the daring and unflinching Meena - and eventually her daughter - as she navigates life in a strange place, and struggles to manage her new family's expectations in the uncertain tides of her diasporic life.