Gunfire interrupts Salva's Arabic class and his teacher tells the children to run into the bush.

Armed soldiers divide the displaced group; Salva tries to join the men but is sent to the women's side.

Salva wakes in the barn to find the entire group has abandoned him while he slept.

An old Dinka woman recognizes Salva's tribal markings and shares her peanuts with him.

A group of Dinka travelers accepts Salva into their party because he is one of their tribe.

Salva's Uncle Jewiir appears and reunites with him, quickly becoming the group's respected leader.

A lion drags Salva's friend Marial away from camp during the night.

Uncle Jewiir helps Salva endure the Akobo desert by teaching him to focus on one small goal at a time.

Nuer tribesmen ambush the group, steal Uncle Jewiir's gun, tie him to a tree, and shoot him dead.

The group arrives at the Itang refugee camp in Ethiopia, surrounded by thousands of displaced people.

Soldiers force the camp's refugees toward the crocodile-filled Gilo River, where thousands are killed.

Salva leads approximately 1,500 lost boys on a grueling trek south toward refugee camps in Kenya.

Salva's name finally appears on the list of refugees selected to emigrate to America.

Salva arrives in Rochester, New York, and meets his American adoptive family for the first time.

Salva returns to Sudan to drill wells; Nya approaches the crew's leader and he says, "My name is Salva."

When soldiers attack near his village, eleven-year-old Salva flees into the bush, separated from his family and forced to survive on the kindness of strangers. He finds a fragile lifeline in his Uncle Jewiir, a rebel soldier who leads the group through lion country and the brutal Akobo desert toward an Ethiopian refugee camp. After Nuer tribesmen kill Jewiir, Salva presses on alone, and when soldiers force the camp's refugees into a crocodile-filled river, he barely escapes with his life. Rising from survivor to leader, he guides over a thousand lost boys across harsh terrain to safety in Kenya, where years later he is chosen to emigrate to America. After building a new life in Rochester and discovering his father is alive, Salva returns to Sudan to drill wells, finally meeting Nya and introducing himself as the man who has transformed her village.

Salva's headline journey from war to America and back.

Salva daydreams in Arabic class about his mother, brothers, and clay cows before gunfire erupts.

Nya walks to the muddy pond and must stop to remove a painful thorn from her foot.

Salva joins hundreds of displaced people fleeing the fighting but finds none of his family members among them.

The old Dinka woman tells Salva he must leave because sheltering him puts her own life in danger.

A Jur-chol boy uses a honeyguide bird to track down a beehive and the group eats their fill of honey.

Salva befriends a Dinka boy named Marial, who understands his deep longing for his family.

Uncle Jewiir kills an antelope and the group feasts, but many become violently ill from eating too much.

Nya's little sister Akeer becomes dangerously ill after drinking contaminated pond water.

The group reaches the wide Nile River and men weave reed canoes by hand to paddle across.

On a food-rich Nile island, the group settles in for the night only to be overwhelmed by attacking mosquitoes.

The group encounters men dying of thirst in the Akobo desert; a woman wipes one man's lips with her own water.

Salva spots a tall woman in an orange scarf at the refugee camp and rushes toward her, believing she is his mother.

After three days of drilling, water is struck at Nya's village and the community erupts in celebration.

An Irish aid worker named Michael teaches Salva English and volleyball at the Ifo refugee camp.

After a cousin's email reveals his father is alive, Salva travels to a Sudanese hospital to find him.

Before the chaos begins, Salva sits in class daydreaming about his family — a small glimpse of ordinary life before everything is torn away. His survival across many months depends on a string of chance encounters: a Jur-chol boy who leads the group to honey, a new friend named Marial, and an uncle who hunts for the group and guards against lions. Meanwhile, Nya's world is defined by the grinding labor of water-fetching, and her sister Akeer's dangerous illness makes the stakes of that labor painfully clear. After reaching Kenya, Salva's future is reshaped by an Irish aid worker named Michael, who teaches him English and volleyball — skills that will carry him into American life. The two storylines draw together as water is finally struck at Nya's village, and Salva's reunion with his long-lost father sets the stage for his return to Sudan as a philanthropist.

The encounters and details that shaped Salva's and Nya's journeys.

After the old woman flees, Salva spots a group of Dinka travelers and chooses to wait and join them.

The old Dinka woman presses a gourd and peanuts into Salva's hands before he departs with the new group.

Nya's family is forced to live near a dangerous seasonal lakebed where Dinka-Nuer violence threatens them constantly.

A clinic doctor tells Akeer's family that dirty water caused her illness and all water must be boiled before drinking.

Salva badly injures his toe in the Akobo desert; Uncle Jewiir uses nearby landmarks as small goals to keep him walking.

Uncle Jewiir tells Salva their village was destroyed and that he will leave Salva at the camp before returning to fight.

After Nuer tribesmen kill Uncle Jewiir, Salva and the group spend the rest of the day mourning rather than traveling.

Salva realizes the orange-scarf woman is not his mother and finally accepts that his family is most likely dead.

A crocodile victim pulls Salva underwater at the Gilo River; the accident accidentally saves him from being shot.

Salva reaches the far bank of the Gilo alive and decides to lead the surviving boys south toward Kenya.

Unwilling to wait indefinitely behind Kakuma's barbed wire, Salva leaves and walks for months to reach Ifo camp.

Salva reunites with his father at the hospital; his father does not recognize him at first and performs a water-sprinkling greeting.

Salva's father reveals that most of the family survived the war but warns Salva not to visit — he would risk being impressed into service.

Salva delivers his first school assembly speech to raise money for wells, drawing courage from his years leading the lost boys.

Dep points out that the well-driller is Dinka; Nya learns he has dug wells for both Nuer and Dinka people.

Salva's survival hinges on a series of pivotal choices and hard-won realizations, beginning with his decision to wait alone and join a new band of Dinka travelers after the old woman sends him away. The most important lesson of his life arrives in the Akobo desert, where Uncle Jewiir teaches him that even unbearable hardship can be endured by focusing on one small step at a time. The deaths of those he loves, and the devastating moment he realizes the orange-scarred woman is not his mother, force Salva to accept his losses and discover his own inner strength. Surviving the Gilo River massacre, he chooses to lead the lost boys south — a decision that transforms him from a wandering child into a responsible leader. His emotional reunion with his father, his courageous fundraising campaign, and finally Nya's discovery that a Dinka enemy has brought clean water to her Nuer village mark the full arc of his journey from displacement to transformation.

The key decisions and discoveries that transformed Salva from a lost boy into a leader.