A Long Walk to Water is a short novel written by Linda Sue Park and published in 2010. It includes the true story of Salva Dut, a part of the Dinka tribe and a Sudanese Lost Boy, and the fictional story of Nya, a young village girl that was a part of the Nuer tribe.
Salva Dut
Salva Dut was separated from his family during a civil war in what is now South Sudan. He has to walk for weeks with only the hope that one day he will find his family again. Salva also struggles to find food and water to survive along with avoiding gunmen, lions and other threats. Salva leads 1,500 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 who tells him that most of his family survived. Hearing that, Salva starts a volunteer group to build wells in South Sudan called Water for South Sudan.
Nya
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 2008-2009. Her family home is far from the nearest pond, where she walks twice a day to support her parents and younger sister, Akeer. Throughout the story, her sister, Akeer, gets sick, 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.
