Beyond the Mountains

The powerful story of how an immigrant from the Philippines overcame childhood trauma and an emotionally abusive marriage to find her voice and thrive

As a child in a small barrio in the Philippines, Deja Vu Prem faced neglect and physical abuse. At age seventeen, desperate to escape her situation and claim a better life for herself beyond the mountains of her town, she became a mail-order bride and moved to San Francisco. But the challenges of her childhood didn’t go away—they merely evolved into the form of her emotionally abusive husband.

Cut off from her family and any kind of emotional or financial support, Prem was a prisoner in her own home, unable even to use the phone or check the mail. But she wasn’t helpless. Relying on her deep faith and the fire within that had always pushed her to achieve, Prem made the brave decision to escape her situation to provide a better life for herself and her two young children.

Recounting Prem’s harrowing yet hopeful journey, Beyond the Mountains is a stirring and moving portrait of one immigrant’s refusal to be defined as a victim and a testament on finding the strength to forgive in order to reclaim the power that lives within us all.