Rising Water

The Story of the Thai Cave Rescue

By: Marc Aronson

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

The incredible true story of the twelve boys trapped with their coach in a flooded cave in Thailand and their inspiring rescue—as seen in Ron Howard's Thirteen Lives.

On June 23, 2018, twelve members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach were exploring the Tham Luang cave complex in northern Thailand when disaster struck. A rainy season downpour flooded the tunnels, trapping them as they took shelter on a shelf of the dark cave. Eight days of searching yielded no signs of life, but on July 2 they were discovered by two British divers. The boys and their coach were eventually rescued in an international operation that took three days. What could have been a terrible tragedy became an amazing story of survival.

Award-winning author Marc Aronson brings us the backstory behind how this astounding rescue took place. Rising Water highlights the creative thinking and technology that made a successful mission possible by examining the physical, environmental, and psychological factors surrounding the rescue. From the brave Thai Navy SEAL who lost his life while placing oxygen tanks along the passageways of the cave, to the British divers that ultimately swam the boys to safety, to the bravery of the boys and their coach, this is the breathtaking rescue that captivated the entire world.

Surviving the Impossible

This is an incredible story of team work to save the lives of young boys who are members of a soccer team and their coach. To think anyone could have been saved under such odds is almost unbelievable. The rescue has the world's top, extreme cave divers come in to help bring the boys and their coach out of a flooded underground cave system. Thai Navy commandos take the brunt of the task. One of them is killed. The boys have to be sedated and equipped with full-face scuba masks and restrained and dragged through near zero visibility water and tight constrictions. You can feel the claustrophobia as the narrator weaves the story to its final conclusion. Hundreds of people played a part in the rescue. Many people of different cultures and languages melded into one force to effect the rescue of the boys and their coach.

Not Unabridged

The story itself is great, however I did not like the narrator. My son struggles with reading so we were reading along with the audiobook. We quickly noticed that the narrator skipped sentences and even a whole paragraph while reading. This was very frustrating when you are trying to help a child with reading along with Audiobooks.