The setting is Cocodrie, a small town on the disappearing Louisiana coastline in 1923, where a sensitive young girl receives the gift of a camera that offers her a window into an otherwise frightening world. The haunting, mythical culture of the Acadians feeds her imagination until her move to the volatile city of New Orleans where societal expectations and religious conventions inhibit her artistic yearnings. Motherhood and her misunderstood mental challenges lead to challenging circumstances.
This novel follows the stories, in alternating chapters, of Dolores Couvillon in the 1920's, and her grandchild, Elaine Landry, sixty years later. It is set in motion by two main events: In 1923 an itinerant photographer (based upon the artist, Theodore Winans) gives thirteen-year-old Dolores a camera, which affects the trajectory of her life; Elaine returns to New Orleans in 1988 after leaving a soulless job and marriage and begins to unravel the mystery of her grandmother's legacy.
Dolores spends her first six years in the Cajun town, Cocodrie, on the exotic coast of Louisiana, sequestered with her dying mother. The camera becomes her vehicle to navigate the world. She becomes quite adept at the art of photography, wins a new camera in a Kodak contest, and sets up a darkroom to process her own prints. She and a boy named Earl Rizan become fast friends taking boat transfers to school and fall in love.
Meanwhile her restless grandfather decides to pursue a love life of his own. When Elaine discovers that her grandmother's gifts and tragic life have been kept secret, she goes on a mission to learn all she can about Dolores and her mysterious photographs. Family wounds that have been deepening for decades come to the surface and must be confronted in light of Elaine's discoveries.
Steeped in the exotic atmosphere of southern Louisiana, The Meeting of Air and Water explores the nature and fragility of the human need to create, as well as the complications and struggles that arrive when this need is denied. With insight and humor the novel reveals the dangers of kept family secrets and the healing that can occur when truth comes to light.