In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six-year-old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood. Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality. Desperate to repair the structure of her world in order to save her ailing father and sinking home, this tiny hero must learn to survive catastrophes of epic proportions.

The film's fictional setting, "Isle de Charles Doucet", known to its residents as the Bathtub, was inspired by several isolated and independent fishing communities threatened by erosion, hurricanes, and rising sea levels in Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish, most notably the rapidly eroding Isle de Jean Charles. It was filmed in Montegut, a town in Terrebonne Parish.