When the Rain Came: Volume 1

By Matthew Eicheldinger

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FCD8QZ9M
• ISBN13: 9798881605131
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 13 to 15 years
• Grade Range: Grades 8 to 10