A Long Walk to Water begins 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, fetches water from a pond that is a two-hour walk from her home: she goes to the pond two times a 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 astonishingly and movingly.