‘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 Meeting of Air and Water by Sharon LaCour published August 2024 and is described as a ‘poignant and dramatic debut’.
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 and today Sharon shares a gorgeous personal piece with us about her Acadian heritage and the inspiration for her debut novel. I do hope you enjoy!
The Meeting of Air and Water – Purchase Link
[ About The Meeting of Air and Water ]
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.
[ Guest Post ]
My family heritage includes two distinct branches of French settlers. One branch descends from the early 18th century settlers who populated New Orleans and the Mississippi River colonies during the French colonization of Louisiana; the other branch are from the early 17th century French settlers of Nova Scotia. These Acadians—named for their region in Canada, Acadia—were expelled in 1755 when the new regime considered their financial success and cultural and religious practices a threat to British governance.
I grew up in New Orleans hearing the stories of my father’s family told in the archaic French that the Acadians brought with them to Louisiana. Despite their troubled past, Acadians (or Cajuns) are known for their love of life, of music and dancing, of good food and hard work. They tend to be suspicious of strangers initially, but little is required to earn their love and loyalty. They welcome anyone who will at least taste a boiled crawfish or some of their traditional sausage, boudin. Their unique cultural traditions and joie de vivre inform my writing which takes place primarily in the Gulf South, especially in and around New Orleans.
My mother was my first and longest-lasting inspiration in becoming a writer. She shared an Acadian background and loved to make up stories. I went to sleep every night listening to her tell stories ‘out of her head’, some of which she would later transcribe on a Royal typewriter. She encouraged me to write stories even as a child, and after earning degrees in music, I began to do so in earnest.
My first published novel, The Meeting of Air and Water, takes place in the 1920s and 80s in New Orleans and in Cocodrie, a small Acadian fishing village on the coast. A Louisiana photographer named Fonville Winans traveled the coastal towns of the state in the 1930s documenting Cajun life. After being introduced to a collection of his photographs I became fascinated with that era and with the daily lives and culture of the Cajun people. I was also intrigued by what New Orleans was like in the 1920s—when my mother was young—and the book was born out of my desire to ‘live’ in that time and place.
In the novel, a photographer based on Winans gives a camera to a sensitive young girl, Dolores, who ends up using photography as a way to make the world an easier and more comfortable place. Her eccentricities are tolerated in the community of her insulated little town, but after moving to New Orleans with her husband, she begins to struggle. The roles of wife and mother and the constraints of the church and society on women, make it difficult for her to engage in the one activity that grounds her. Two generations later, her granddaughter, Elaine, returns to New Orleans to help care for her grandfather, Earl, Dolores’ husband. Elaine begins to unravel the mystery of Dolores’ life and death, a story which has been kept from her by Earl and Elaine’s mother, Charlotte, both of whom worry that Elaine’s artistic leanings will take her on a difficult path.
I have always been fascinated by the human impulse to create in any form. When that need is denied as it was to women for generations, the results are damaging. Dolores and Elaine both struggle against societal, familial and spiritual obstacles to pursue an artistic impulse that will not be quenched.
The novel draws upon the exotic cultural and geographical descriptive environment of New Orleans and coastal Louisiana to give it an unforgettable mood and atmosphere. It offers a unique glance into a forgotten culture, a vibrant city, and the lives of two inspiring artists’ struggle to follow their dreams.
Praise for The Meeting of Air and Water
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 comes across as natural, unaffected, and most of all believable. — Shane K. Bernard, author of The Cajuns: Americanization of a People
[ Bio ]
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 2019. 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 that enhances the compelling narrative. The novel makes use of Sharon’s experiences of summer vacations on Lake Pontchartrain in an area of lake camps in east New Orleans called Little Woods. Sadly, none of these camps so beloved by many New Orleanians remains, having been destroyed over the years by hurricanes.
Sharon lives in Lafayette, Louisiana with her husband and pets. She works as a pianist and piano teacher. She is working on an historical novel set in the late 18th century along Bayou Lafourche and a coming-of-age novel set in rural Mississippi during the Depression.
You can find out more about Sharon at www.sharonlacour.com or follow her on Facebook at @sharonlacourwriter and on other platforms at @sharonlacour
Thanks for inviting Sharon LaCour to write a guest post for your blog. She’s thrilled!
Dan you are so very welcome!