When the Rain Came

The rain never stops. The world is drowning. Survival is everything. This is the first book in a new gripping dystopian adventure series for young adult readers by New York Times bestselling author Matt Eicheldinger. “If we stay here, if we keep wandering without a real plan, we won’t last. Maybe The Hill is dangerous. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s the only plan we have.”

Seventeen-year-old Aurora knows how to survive. Life in the foster system has taught her how to stay quiet, stay smart, and stay ready. But nothing could prepare her for this: a never-ending storm that swallows cities, drowns forests, and turns the world into a flooded wasteland.

Trapped in a collapsing house with her strict prepper foster parents, Aurora is forced to live by their rules just to stay alive. Until the day they disappear without a trace.

Alone. Abandoned. And running out of time.

All Aurora has is a waterlogged scrap of paper and a name: “The Hill.” With looters closing in and the floodwaters rising higher each day, she’s left with one impossible choice—stay and wait for the storm to take her, or risk everything on a journey through the drowned remains of the world, to a find a place that may or not exist.

It’s forward or nothing.

With echoes of Life As We Knew It, The Last of Us, and Hatchet, Aurora’s story is a gripping, emotionally resonant survival story about resilience, found family, and one girl’s fight to reclaim her future in a drowning world.

Author Biography

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Matt Eicheldinger wasn’t always a writer. He spent most of his childhood playing soccer, reading comics, and trying his best to stay out of trouble. Matt lives in Bloomington, Minnesota with his wife and two children, and tries to create new adventures with them whenever possible. When he’s not writing, you can find him telling students stories in the classroom or trail running along the Minnesota River Bottoms. Alessia Trunfio was born in southern Italy in 1990 but she grew up in Rome, where she still lives. She has wanted to be an illustrator since she was a child. After a Degree in the Animation course of the International School of Comics based in Rome in 2013, Alessia has worked as Background Artist for some of the most important roman animation studios. She currently works as a freelance artist on various animation and illustration projects.