In 2008, when her story begins, Nya is an eleven-year-old girl in Southern Sudan. Her family relies on her to fetch water from a pond several hours away from their village, twice every day. She walks without complaint, recognizing her role in the family’s survival. When the family moves to the camp near the lake during the dry season, Nya displays patience beyond her years as she digs and waits, digs and waits for water to rise up from the mud. Park reveals little about Nya’s personality. Nya’s story is absent examples of a carefree and innocent childhood. She shoulders her responsibility willingly and takes life’s hardships in stride.

The circumstances of Nya’s family’s plight are beyond her control. She has been born in a time and place untouched by modernity, with no concept of the technological developments that could, were they present, help make obtaining life’s basic necessities that much easier. She accepts her role in the family, including the fact that she must teach her younger sister, Akeer, how to fetch water even though doing so will slow her down. She has learned to be resourceful out of necessity. This resourcefulness is shown when she uses a thorn to remove a thorn.

Nya knows little of life beyond her village, or beyond the lake camp, or beyond what she experiences on her walks to water. She does not go to school, but she is a keen observer of life around her. She appreciates the life she finds at the pond but cannot linger to relish it. Procuring water, which is struggle enough, is exacerbated by the inter-tribal fighting over the water and constant threat of violence. Nya has learned that when resources are scarce, people resort to violence.

It is not until the men in the Jeep come to her village that Nya’s life begins to expand beyond what she has known.  She has never seen, in person or in a book, machines like the ones they bring. The reader can imagine her wonder as she watches their progress drilling for water. Nya has learned the importance of tribal identity, so she is confused when she learns that the boss in charge of the well is Dinka. The possibility that Dinka and Nuer could work side by side seems inconceivable to Nya. But so too does the possibility that she can now drink clean water and will be able to go to school. When Nya realizes that these possibilities are real, gratitude fills her. She overcomes her shyness and bravely approaches the man, Salva. “Thank you,” she tells him.