The Meeting of Air and Water

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 tragic circumstances.
Sixty years later, her granddaughter Elaine, reeling from a divorce, returns to New Orleans to care for Dolores's feisty husband, Earl, in a wheelchair, who lives in a fishing camp on Lake Pontchartrain. Earl is dismayed by the similarities between Elaine and his deceased wife, Dolores, as is Elaine's mother, Charlotte, who fears for her daughter's mental health and well-being. Elaine starts out on a path of self-destruction with an abusive city prosecutor while a former lover pursues her. 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.