In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York's Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.
"Captivating...The setting, the detailed emotive descriptions, and nail-biting adventure are incandescent." —Library Journal (starred)
All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city's flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.
Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most – love and work, community and knowledge – will survive.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.
In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York's Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.
"Captivating...The setting, the detailed emotive descriptions, and nail-biting adventure are incandescent." —Library Journal (starred)
All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city's flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.
Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most – love and work, community and knowledge – will survive.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.
Reviews-
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October 7, 2024
A teen paddles out of a flood-ravaged Manhattan in Caffall’s high-tension dystopian debut. After New York City was sacrificed to rising seas, 13-year-old Nonie and her family stayed behind with a stubborn community of conservationists who made their home on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. When a severe storm finally destroys the museum, Nonie, her older sister Bix, their father Allan, and another adult man, Keller, are the only survivors. Using a canoe from a museum diorama, they head out on the water, hoping to reach Nonie’s aunt’s farm in Tyringham, Mass. Along the way, they encounter wary helpers and strange communities and face dangers from both people and the violent weather, which Nonie has developed a skill for forecasting. The emotional ballast of the story, though, is Nonie’s flashbacks to their time at the museum, where former employees came together to try and save the collections and record as much as they could of Earth’s past as the world crumbled. Stories of plague, gruesome death, and Nonie’s mother’s slow decline from kidney disease paint a bleak picture of subsistence amid the group’s determined efforts to save knowledge. The plot will feel familiar to cli-fi readers, but it’s affecting nonetheless. Caffall should win some fans with this. -
Narrator Eunice Wong's voice fills with urgency as a tiny group of survivors struggles to escape a drowned Manhattan. Nonie, 13, tells the story from some years in the future, but Wong does not let this reassure listeners one whit as Nonie, her sister, their father, and Keller, an adult friend, fight their way through what Nonie calls "the world as it is." While Wong adopts a tone of vulnerability for Nonie's dialogue, she deepens her voice for the adults, occasionally injecting a tone of forced reassurance that fools neither Nonie nor listeners. She missteps with the adoption of a differentiated yet unconvincing accent for Keller, a Black man from outside of Chicago. Listeners who muscle past that will experience a world that suggests the spirit of author Octavia Butler. V.S. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine
