Book Description

Two generations of women struggle with love—and journey to remote corners of the world—in this “remarkably passionate and engaging” novel (San Francisco Chronicle). From a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, When Mountains Walked tells of two parallel love affairs, years apart. In the 1940s, Althea Baines follows her seismologist husband to the heart of the Indian subcontinent to trace the origins of earthquakes. Here, awakening to a form of spirituality she had never imagined, she eventually finds solace with a Hindu priest. Years later, her granddaughter Maggie follows her own idealistic husband to a canyon in central Peru to set up a health clinic. Alive to the culture and the place, Maggie falls recklessly in love with a revolutionary leader and follows him on an apocalyptic trip into the rain forest. As the lives of the two women echo and illuminate each other, and each is swept up in her own time by powerful forces, “this superb novel sets the mountains in motion—shaking up relations between sexes, generations, and rich nations and poor” (Newsday). “A gifted storyteller . . . When Mountains Walked subtly questions how much is too much to sacrifice in a relationship.” —The Wall Street Journal “This is a book you mention to your friends.” —Francine Prose, author of Lovers at the Chameleon Club