Overview

Three love stories are entwined in this poignant and dramatic debut novel, The Meeting of Air and Water. In 1923, Dolores, a sensitive young girl in a small coastal Louisiana town receives the gift of a camera which offers her a window into an otherwise frightening world. The haunting, mythical culture of the Acadians feeds her imagination as her talent for the art of photography develops. A romance begins in childhood with Earl, her loyal champion, and they move to the volatile city of New Orleans where she continues to pursue her artistic path despite the societal and cultural conventions that discourage it. Over fifty years later, Dolores' granddaughter, Elaine, reeling from a divorce and struggling to find her own artistic calling, returns to New Orleans to care for her grandfather Earl, now a feisty octogenarian, who lives in Little Woods, a community of fishing camps on Lake Pontchartrain. Elaine is pursued by two former lovers, one an abusive, alcoholic city prosecutor, the other a handsome Cajun fisherman-opposites who appeal to different sides of Elaine's personality. When Elaine discovers that her grandmother's photographs have been kept secret, she goes on a mission to learn all she can about Dolores and her mysterious life. Family wounds that have been deepening for decades come to the surface and must be confronted in light of Elaine's discoveries. Meanwhile, Earl, despite his infirmities, decides to pursue romance one last time and falls in love with a wise soul, Audrey, from Appalachia, who encourages Earl to bring to light the truth of Dolores' inspired life and work. The characters find healing through these revelations and their newfound loves. Steeped in the exotic atmosphere of southern Louisiana, The Meeting of Air and Water celebrates the healing power of love at any age while exploring the nature and fragility of the human need to create, and 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. The novel was a finalist in the William Wisdom-William Faulkner novel-in-progress competition. It was inspired by the photographs of Fonville Winans, who traveled the coast of Louisiana in the 1920s documenting Cajun life.

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Reviews

In Sharon LaCour's debut novel, The Meeting of Air and Water, we are taken deep into the mystery and harsh reality of two women's struggles for life, for art, for freedom. From the fishing camp of Cocodrie, Louisiana in the 1920s to the allure and danger of New Orleans in the 1980s, we travel with Dolores and Elaine as they make their way through worlds that do not offer a safe place for them to flourish. LaCour does not allow her heroines to escape the pain of their lives, and because of that, we are able to see the love that prevails. LaCour's writing is that rare combination: lush and lyrical, stark and honest. This is a wonderful book! -Patrick Cabello Hansel, author of The Devouring Land, Quitting Time and Breathing in Minneapolis Sharon LaCour's lifetime teaching and playing piano surfaces in this multi-generational tale in the ease and confidence with which she moves between the lush, hard-scrabble Cajun country life of the early 20th century and New Orleans nearing the fin de siècle. The story includes the awakening through naïve photography of the protagonist's grandmother, as well as her struggles with unidentified mental illness, all within the context of a true love story. Her grandfather remains a character in both the early and late scenes, a hardy man whose many losses have not broken him. The granddaughter's own struggles bear unexpected similarities to her forebear's life, especially in her work as a photographer. LaCour has created characters and scenes in prose that is flawlessly engaging and always economical. In these vivid characters' lives, she deftly reveals the grace that guides the lives of decent people through storms of every kind. Besides the compelling narrative, LaCour manages to imbue the story with such a palpable atmospheric density that weeks after finishing the read, one can still feel the location as if it were a personal memory. -Ralph Adamo, author, editor, Xavier Review LaCour has penned a novel grounded in down-to-earth realism. While playful imagination informs her writing, she nonetheless knows her factual subject like an insider, because she is an insider, having grown up around the Cajun people she has chosen to write about, and is herself of Louisiana French descent. LaCour's plain-spoken dialogue and frank descriptions avoid a common pitfall of those writing about 'earthy' people - namely, self-conscious cutesiness. Instead, LaCour depicts lives neither caricatured nor idealized, but weaves a tale that come across as natural, unaffected, and most of all believable. - Shane K. Bernard, author of The Cajuns: Americanization of a People

Author Information

Sharon LaCour grew up in New Orleans listening to her father and his siblings share stories in their Louisiana French language of their lives as the children of sharecroppers in central Louisiana and their dramatic move to New Orleans during the Depression. Most of Sharon's writing takes place in Louisiana and around the Deep South. Her interest in writing began with her mother narrating a new bedtime story every night, some of which she recorded on a Royal classic typewriter. Sharon went on to study music and completed a master's degree in piano. She began writing fiction in earnest during long winters she spent in Minnesota. Her stories and essays have been published in the Xavier, Sheepshead, Chautauqua and Arkansas Reviews among others. Although her writing is for adults, her stories often feature children and young adults in challenging situations. She also writes about women and the contradictions of motherhood and creativity; historic and current issues of racism and sexism; the influence of spirituality and belief; and the unique spirit of her cultural heritage. Sharon's debut literary novel, The Meeting of Air and Water, was a novel-in-progress finalist in the William Wisdom-William Faulkner novel competition in 2021. The novel was inspired by the photographs of Fonville Winans, a Baton Rouge photographer who documented Louisiana Cajun life in the 1920s. It follows the lives of two women artists, one grandmother to the other, who struggle against societal and cultural expectations that threaten their need to create. The intense atmosphere of the novel functions as a contributing character adding to the compelling narrative. Sharon lives in Lafayette, Louisiana with her husband and pets. She works as a pianist and piano teacher. She is working on a a coming-of-age novel set in rural Mississippi during the Depression and also an historical novel set in the late 18th century along Bayou Lafourche.

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