A Long Walk to Water is a creative non-fiction story about the life of one of the Lost Boys from South Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War. The primary character, Salva Dut, relates his life from a pre-teenager wandering with groups of other war victims from refugee camp to refugee camp, and then to his new home with his new family in Rochester, New York as a young adult, and finally back to his family of origin in Sudan. Ultimately, Salva creates an organization that digs wells, the ultimate gift of life, for small Sudanese villages. The book opens with Salva daydreaming during Arabic class. Jolted back to reality by gunfire, Salva obeys his teachers who say not to run back home to their villages but to run for the bush instead. Throughout most of the novel, Salva and the companions he meets along the way always move away from sounds of armies. The young boys have to fear not only for their lives, but also being forced to fight for either side of the combatants in this Second SuA Long Walk to Water is a creative non-fiction story about the life of one of the Lost Boys from South Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War. The primary character, Salva Dut, relates his life from a pre-teenager wandering with groups of other war victims from refugee camp to refugee camp, and then to his new home with his new family in Rochester, New York as a young adult, and finally back to his family of origin in Sudan. Ultimately, Salva creates an organization that digs wells, the ultimate gift of life, for small Sudanese villages. The book opens with Salva daydreaming during Arabic class. Jolted back to reality by gunfire, Salva obeys his teachers who say not to run back home to their villages but to run for the bush instead. Throughout most of the novel, Salva and the companions he meets along the way always move away from sounds of armies. The young boys have to fear not only for their lives, but also being forced to fight for either side of the combatants in this Second SuA Long Walk to Water is a creative non-fiction story about the life of one of the Lost Boys from South Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War. The primary character, Salva Dut, relates his life from a pre-teenager wandering with groups of other war victims from refugee camp to refugee camp, and then to his new home with his new family in Rochester, New York as a young adult, and finally back to his family of origin in Sudan. Ultimately, Salva creates an organization that digs wells, the ultimate gift of life, for small Sudanese villages. The book opens with Salva daydreaming during Arabic class. Jolted back to reality by gunfire, Salva obeys his teachers who say not to run back home to their villages but to run for the bush instead. Throughout most of the novel, Salva and the companions he meets along the way always move away from sounds of armies. The young boys have to fear not only for their lives, but also being forced to fight for either side of the combatants in this Second Sudanese Civil War. The first group of people whom Salva meets up with abandon him as he sleeps in a barn. However, all is not lost, because he meets an older Dinka (his tribe) woman who feeds him peanuts. When the fighting gets too close and she decides she must leave, she finds a group of wanderers for him to join. Salva worries constantly about his family. One day his Uncle Jewiir meets up with the group. He is a member of the rebel forces and carries a rifle. For these reasons, he becomes the leader of this band. Before he is shot by a band from the Nuer tribe (the Dinkas’ rival), he teaches Salva the most important lesson of the book—that you can get through even horrible, painful things if you do work through them by setting small goals. Salva experiences many horrific adventures as he walks, swims, and canoes from camp to camp. For example, his good friend is slaughtered and carried away in the night by a lion. He is nearly eaten by alligators when he and his companions are forced into a dangerous river across which he must swim. He and his group come upon several men, dead and dying of thirst in the desert, and he sees the kindness and mercy of some women who share their water putting their own lives in jeopardy. While he is in New York, he continues to learn the English that Michael, an Irish camp aid had taught him, and he goes to junior college. During this time, he gets the idea that he would like to do something for his people. The co-narrative is the life of a young Nuer girl, named Nya, from the tribe of Salva’s traditional enemy. The story describes her struggle to carry water to her family each day and explains how her younger sister gets very ill from drinking the polluted water they all must drink. One day a group of men come to the village and begin drilling a well. Everyone is overjoyed because it will change their lives. At the very end, she asks the leader of the group who he is, and it is Salva. The novel has come fu

The New York Times bestseller A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan, a girl in 2008 and a boy in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay. Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya s in an astonishing and moving way."

Few children can imagine walking eight hours a day or digging by hand deep into the mud, just to find water for their family. But the backbreaking work under the hot African sun is just a typical day for 11-year-old Nya, growing up in Sudan circa 2008. She rarely complains; it would do no good. Salva, also 11, is from a prominent, upper-class Sudanese family. As the Second Sudanese Civil War erupts in the mid-1980s, Salva is forced to run as bombs hit his village. Fleeing quickly and leaving his family behind, he joins up with bands of strangers—all headed out of their war-torn homeland to Ethiopia. Difficult as it may be, both Nya and Salva come to accept their own long walks to water—each peppered with challenges and each tied to family and survival. Nya’s sister becomes very ill; Salva loses several loved ones. But Newbery Award winner Linda Sue Park’s brilliant dual narrative provides a soulful insight into both journeys. Both Salva and Nya are urged on by their individual reserves of hope—for a better tomorrow, a better future—but neither really knows what lies beyond. The book’s denouement, however, intertwines their stories in a soul-satisfying and optimistic way. A Long Walk to Water is based on Salva Dut’s true story of perseverance amid adversity. But beyond that, it’s a touching narrative about strife and survival on a scale most American readers will never see.

Few children can imagine walking eight hours a day or digging by hand deep into the mud, just to find water for their family. But the backbreaking work under the hot African sun is just a typical day for 11-year-old Nya, growing up in Sudan circa 2008. She rarely complains; it would do no good. Salva, also 11, is from a prominent, upper-class Sudanese family. As the Second Sudanese Civil War erupts in the mid-1980s, Salva is forced to run as bombs hit his village. Fleeing quickly and leaving his family behind, he joins up with bands of strangers—all headed out of their war-torn homeland to Ethiopia. Difficult as it may be, both Nya and Salva come to accept their own long walks to water—each peppered with challenges and each tied to family and survival. Nya’s sister becomes very ill; Salva loses several loved ones. But Newbery Award winner Linda Sue Park’s brilliant dual narrative provides a soulful insight into both journeys. Both Salva and Nya are urged on by their individual reserves of hope—for a better tomorrow, a better future—but neither really knows what lies beyond. The book’s denouement, however, intertwines their stories in a soul-satisfying and optimistic way. A Long Walk to Water is based on Salva Dut’s true story of perseverance amid adversity. But beyond that, it’s a touching narrative about strife and survival on a scale most American readers will never see.