All the Water in the World

A Novel

By: Eiren Caffall

Narrated by: Eunice Wong

Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2025 Eiren Caffall (P)2025 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"A gorgeously written novel that tackles not just the climate condition, but the human one. Narrated by Nonie, a young member of a family in the near future, All the Water in the World tells the story of their escape from their dwelling, which just happens to be the top of the Museum of Natural History (called Amen) until after a fierce super storm makes it inhabitable, forcing them to flee to what they desperately hope is going to be safety. This is one brilliant and engrossing book—and I’ll say my heartfelt 'Amen' to that."—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Days of Wonder

"Along with its gorgeous language, its deeply human characters, its stay up all night 'cause you have to know what happens storytelling, All the Water in the World does the goddamn impossible. It makes the climate crisis real. Devastatingly, terrifyingly, gloriously real. Eiren Caffall is a masterfulful storyteller."—Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life

"I am gripped by Eiren Caffall's river-going adventure tale. It moves through darkness like the beam of a flashlight: urgent, questing, incandescent."—Josephine Ferorelli, co-author of The Conceivable Future