A Long Walk to Water
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. Includes an afterword by author Linda Sue Park and the real-life Salva Dut, on whom the novel is based, and who went on to found Water for South Sudan.
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Book details
- Publisher
- Clarion Books
- Publication date
- 2011
- Print length
- 128 pages
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780547577319
History
What to Know Before Reading A Long Walk to Water
A Long Walk to Water tells the parallel stories of two South Sudanese children navigating immense hardship separated by decades. Beginning in 1985 during the Second Sudanese Civil War, eleven-year-old Salva Dut is forced to flee his school when gunfire erupts, embarking on a harrowing years-long journey on foot through hostile wilderness and refugee camps as one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan". Decades later in 2008, an eleven-year-old girl named Nya spends her entire day walking miles to fetch dirty water for her family. The two distinct timelines ultimately converge when an adult Salva—having survived his journey, immigrated to the United States, and founded a clean-water organization—returns to drill a vital water well in Nya's village, uniting their stories in a powerful testament to survival, perseverance, and hope
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About the author
Linda Sue Park
“When you are in a situation like this, you have to keep moving forward.”
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