Janet Johnson Anderson

Avhi's Flight Janet Johnson Anderson

WINNER, National Indie Book Awards for Best Women's Fiction. FINALIST, International Book Awards for Best Multicultural Fiction.
WINNER, Beverly Hills Book Awards for Best Multicultural Fiction. FINALIST, American Fiction Awards for Best Women's Fiction.

From a remote corner of Nepal's countryside, fourteen-year-old Avhi Tharu says a prayer for Mr. Singh. She has been promised to him in marriage. Instead, she clubs him in the head and flees with his ox and cart from the village. Days later, she slips through a mountain pass and into the lives of fellow travelers en route to Pokhara, and Kathmandu. On the run, uncertain who to trust, and how to reconcile the past, Avhi's encounter with girls and young women at the Thank Kot Center, stirs her to discover a purpose beyond herself.

Avhi's Flight is a beautiful and bittersweet adventure. Its story weaves together the complex threads of one girl's search for wholeness, the reckoning of lives left behind, and a culture's disregard for its women. Like the nonfiction bestseller Half The Sky, this important piece of fiction aligns with a central moral challenge of our time.

"If you're interested in women standing up for women, then this is a must-read."
---Bonnie Roberts
Contributing Writer, The Huffington Post; Fellow in Verse, Dublin;
Nat'l Endowment for the Humanities Scholar, Paris; Fulbright Scholar, Turkey

"This book highlights the sad realities that accompany women and their children in Nepal on a daily basis. It is an eye-opening story about how profound gender-based injustices are common practices in Nepal. The purpose of the Women's Foundation of Nepal is to tackle these issues by raising awareness of them, and empowering women with their rights."
---Renu Sharma
President, The Women's Foundation of Nepal