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Table of Contents
About The Book
AN UNSTOPPABLE FLOOD.
A BITTER OLD WOMAN.
A FRIGHTENED CHILD.
TO SURVIVE THE END OF THE WORLD, THEY’LL NEED EACH OTHER.
Pam has spent years hiding from the world behind sharp sarcasm and stubborn independence. In her seventies, widowed, isolated, and struggling with failing health, her biggest concern is the council’s refusal to fix the flooding in her backyard.
Then ten-year-old Charlotte is suddenly left in her care.
The quiet, anxious girl is the last person Pam wants responsibility for — but as an uneasy friendship begins to grow, strange disasters start tearing their neighbourhood apart. Puddles become lakes. Streets collapse into sinkholes. Entire communities vanish beneath rising water.
With the world descending into chaos and no rescue coming, Pam and Charlotte are forced to leave the safety of home and journey through a terrifying new landscape where survival is never guaranteed.
Heartbreaking, suspenseful, and fiercely human, The Water Takes is a gripping post-apocalyptic thriller about found family, resilience, and hope at the end of the world. Perfect for readers of Station Eleven, The Road, and The Last of Us, this unforgettable climate dystopian novel combines literary depth with edge-of-your-seat tension.
“Made me laugh and roar and weep.” — Kate Mildenhall
“Dizzyingly good.” — Jacqueline Bublitz
A BITTER OLD WOMAN.
A FRIGHTENED CHILD.
TO SURVIVE THE END OF THE WORLD, THEY’LL NEED EACH OTHER.
Pam has spent years hiding from the world behind sharp sarcasm and stubborn independence. In her seventies, widowed, isolated, and struggling with failing health, her biggest concern is the council’s refusal to fix the flooding in her backyard.
Then ten-year-old Charlotte is suddenly left in her care.
The quiet, anxious girl is the last person Pam wants responsibility for — but as an uneasy friendship begins to grow, strange disasters start tearing their neighbourhood apart. Puddles become lakes. Streets collapse into sinkholes. Entire communities vanish beneath rising water.
With the world descending into chaos and no rescue coming, Pam and Charlotte are forced to leave the safety of home and journey through a terrifying new landscape where survival is never guaranteed.
Heartbreaking, suspenseful, and fiercely human, The Water Takes is a gripping post-apocalyptic thriller about found family, resilience, and hope at the end of the world. Perfect for readers of Station Eleven, The Road, and The Last of Us, this unforgettable climate dystopian novel combines literary depth with edge-of-your-seat tension.
“Made me laugh and roar and weep.” — Kate Mildenhall
“Dizzyingly good.” — Jacqueline Bublitz
About The Author
Photograph © Sarah Walker
Sarah Walker is a Naarm/Melbourne-based writer and artist. She writes about anxiety, intimacy and absurdity, in both fiction and non-fiction. She has a particular interest in the body, and the ways in which it escapes our control, as well as how apprehension of disaster impacts our sense of the present. Her first book, The First Time I Thought I Was Dying, a collection of non-fiction essays about the unruly body in late capitalism, won the 2021 Quentin Bryce Award. In 2025, she was awarded the Kill Your Darlings Creative Nonfiction Essay Prize. Sarah is also an award-winning photographer and fine artist, whose work has been commissioned across multiple countries. You can find her work online at sarahwalker.work.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia (March 31, 2026)
- Length: 352 pages
- ISBN13: 9781761633331
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Raves and Reviews
‘Atmospheric and utterly harrowing, Walker has written a disquieting account of grief and fortitude in a drowning world. This book devastated me.’
– Emily O’Grady
‘The Water Takes announces a new and exciting voice in Australian fiction. This beguiling, bedevilling novel about sinkholes and small towns had me gripped from the first page. Both a page-turning odyssey of survival and a heartfelt story of care and connection, The Water Takes is a novel we'll be talking about for years.’
– Dominic Amerena
‘What do you do when the world starts drowning? The Water Takes is haunting, terrifying and still somehow hopeful. Seventy-something Pam is one of the most vivid characters I’ve ever encountered – she made me laugh and roar and weep. I am in awe of Sarah Walker and this book.’
– Kate Mildenhall
Resources and Downloads
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