Before she was born, he was a missionary in India, and that was how she got her name. The Preacher did not call her India Opal though; he called her by her middle name, Opal. Opal and Winn-Dixie walked to the trailer park where she lived.
This expression taken from Allan Poe the "surf-tormented shore" becomes a second metaphor for time, as the waters of the sea slowly but inexorably pound away at the physical existence of the shore.
