A Long Walk to Water

Park worked with Salva in writing the novel, as she interviewed Salva several times to publish his story.

Nya's story is a fictional story, and Park interviewed travelers who saw water wells being drilled in villages like Nya's. She also examined their photographs and videos.

Salva Dut was separated from his family during the Sudanese Civil War in 1985, in what is now South Sudan. He has to walk for weeks, hoping that one day he will find his family again. Salva also struggles to find food and water to survive along with avoiding rebels, lions, and other threats. Salva joins one thousand five hundred (1500) fellow "lost boys" to a refugee camp near the Gilo River. On his way, many people die including his uncle and some of his friends. Seven years later, he arrives in America. He lives with a family in Rochester, New York. Years later, he finds his father in a medical tent, who tells him that most of his family survived. He helps others in need of clean water in South Sudan. Salva was based in 1985.

Nya is an 11-year-old girl who walks eight hours to fetch water from the pond. She and her family live in South Sudan in 2008. Her family home is far from the nearest pond, where she walks twice a day to support her parents and younger sister, Akeer. She also has a little brother that her mom takes care of at home. Throughout the story, her sister, Akeer, gets sick and is told that the water was contaminated. Later, in 2009, a well is built in her village so she will not have to walk so far and drink unsafe water. A school is built along with the well and Nya is overjoyed by this. She then introduces herself to Salva Dut at the end of the book, because she was confused by the fact that Salva, a Dinka, would help her Nuer village (The Dinka and Nuer tribes have been in conflict for many years).