One day in 1993, a lost mountain climber, starving and disoriented, stumbled from the slopes of the treacherous peak known as K2 into an isolated Pakistani village. The impoverished villagers sheltered and fed him until he was well enough to move on. When he learned they had no school for their children, he vowed to return and build them one. In the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, war and poverty have limited education for all, while custom and prejudice have denied education to women altogether. With no other means to escape a life of crushing poverty, many young people...