Pyn-Poi's mother Marak wants her to grow up to be the matriarch of the tribe, learning how to cook, to make medicines, how to care for everyone, but Pyn-Poi would rather be out among the trees like her father Sook-Sook, learning how persuade tree roots into bridges, to feel when shoots are too crowded, when drooping leaves need attention. Then something starts going wrong in The Real: when the rains come, instead of nourishment, they bring a stinking brown fog that's poisoning people and plants alike. Pyn-Poi is the treewoman now: it's her job. Their only chance is for her to climb to the land beyond the Wall, where the Ancestors live, to plead for their intercession. Pyn-Poi never expected to find a whole new world up there, with people who are very different from her own family and friends - a land where they are killing nature, and that's killing The Real. ​"A moving ecological fable, written with her signature grace and compassion" -Elaine Isaak, author of