All the Water in the World

Content Warning: This section discusses death.

The book opens with a passage from the Water Logbook, where protagonist Nonie tracks details of everything related to water and weather. She describes “The Monster in the Water,” her name for a hypercane, the most destructive storm theoretically possible. It pulls energy from other weather systems and causes massive precipitation.

Nonie, a 13-year-old girl, introduces herself by saying that she can feel water: changes in the weather, rivers, floods, and storms. She describes her Water Logbook, an idea she got from her late mother and the members of her settlement, Amen. They preserve cultural artifacts and perform research.

Amen is atop the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and was founded by museum staff members—including Nonie’s mother—who happened to have keys when a massive climate disaster in the form of floods wiped out most of US civilization. The other citizens are local survivors who sought refuge in the museum.

Ominously, Nonie reveals that neither her affinity for water nor the Logbook helped her predict the storm that would hit Amen.