“It’s just a matter of awareness,” she says. But that’s exactly why Park wanted to write this story. The back-breaking work of walking eight hours a day, in 100-degree weather, simply to find water for their family is not something today’s American teens can readily relate to.
“Even know the way to a better life for their children is education,” she says. It’s about making the resources possible to also build schools and bring education to a deprived area. But she is quick to add that it’s not just about water. “For the first time ever, the young people are not going to have to walk every day,” says Park. In just a few years, the project has drilled more than 70 wells. Her husband traveled to Sudan with Dut in 2008 to witness the project’s work. “After reading all of the stories that my husband did, I have always been so excited about what Salva did,” says Park. Park learned of Dut several years ago when her husband, a journalist, began writing about Dut’s non-profit Water for Sudan project, which drills wells to bring clean drinking water to residents in southern Sudan’s remote villages. Nya is a fictional character, although “she is representative of many of the children who live in the Sudan everything that happened to Nya is true.” Some events were simply too horrific to believe, she says, noting that she crafted the novel carefully, “trying to pick and choose what was important.” While everything in Salva’s story is true, Park admits to toning down some of the graphic details witnessed along his journey out of Sudan. It just seemed that this would be the best way.” “The idea of the dual narrative came to me immediately. which were very important to the overall story I wanted to tell,” she says. “I was dealing with two very wide time spans. “I was interested in telling the story it’s actually quite a difficult story,” says Park, 50, the daughter of Korean immigrants. The finely woven novel is a fictionalized account based on the life of Salva Dut-who lives in Rochester, New York, not far from Park. As the Second Sudanese Civil War erupts in the mid-1980s, Salva is forced to run as bombs hit his village.
The latest work by the Newbery Award-winning author, A Long Walk to Water, is a good example, telling a vividly authentic tale of hardship, hope and survival in war-ravaged Sudan from the parallel points of views of children from two different generations who share similar challenges.Ī Long Walk to Water alternates the story of 11-year-old Nya, growing up in Sudan circa 2008, with the story of Salva, also 11, who hails from a prominent, upper-class Sudanese family. “I just have a lot of confidence in young readers being able to handle things that maybe some adults don’t think they can handle,” says Park. Today’s teens might be interested in sex, drugs and vampires, but Linda Sue Park is willing to give that fickle audience a bit more credit.
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