The Starlite Drive-In

Rating:
Summary: Coming of age tale in Indiana with a mystery twist
Review: "The Starlite Drive-In" by Marjorie Reynolds is a coming-of-age tale about a young girl on the cusp of adolescence who learns a lot about life during a long, hot summer in Indiana.
The book opens with the adult Callie Anne Dicksen being summoned to a place where she had spent much of her childhood. The Starlite Drive-In is being torn down by developers when a body and some objects are found. Callie Anne stops by to identify the remains, and is drawn back to the summer of her youth when she changed from a girl to a teenager on her way to becoming a young woman.
Her father is employed to manage the drive-in and spends each night above the concessions stand changing the reels. Her family lives near the grounds in a small house, and her mother, Teal, has not set foot outside for five years. Due to a leg injury, Callie Anne's father is limited in the physical activity he can perform. Into their lives comes a handsome drifter named Charlie Memphis, hired by the theater owner to perform maintenance at the site. Memphis charms mother and daughter, and also proves useful in thwarting a would-be robbery at the theater.
As the summer progresses, Callie Anne realizes that Memphis is less interested in her than her mother, which she at first finds distressing, then confusing as relations with her father deteriorate. Claude Dicksen treats his wife like dirt, while Charlie Memphis treats her like a man ought to treat a woman, and in the long summer evenings while Claude works the reels, an affair develops while Callie Anne eavesdrops from the sidelines.
There are also several subplots; one involving a war veteran named Billy who comes around mooching for food and asking Ms. Dicksen to dance. The other involves Callie Anne's blossoming romance with a boy closer to her own age, Virgil, who runs the ticket booth for Callie Anne's father.

While the book moves in a leisurely summer way, each scene features tension and interesting developments, and the pace and atmosphere really drew me in to the story so that I felt I was there looking over Callie Anne's shoulder. The characters were well-drawn and three-dimensional. There were times you want to be angry with Callie Anne, but you can't help but feel for her with all of the changes going on around her. Her father, Claude, as the antagonist of the piece, has issues but the reader is able to find some sympathy despite his being fairly unlikeable. Charlie Memphis is a dark hero with a mysterious past, and the full truth of some of his history is never clearly divulged. Teal Dicksen, Callie Anne's mother, undergoes the most dynamic transformation, and it's a joy to witness her release from her confinement.
"The Starlite Drive-In" is a moving drama that I could imagine being made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame type film.

Rating:
Summary: What a wonderful surprise?
Review: April:19:04

Last Tuesday night at the Library must have been my lucky day as I had decided not to look at the "newly arrived books" and instead perused amongst the shelves. In my hunt for good reading- I found a gem.

Another book by the same Author is now on my reading list.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: This is by far, one of the best books that I have ever read. From the moment the first chapter turns the clock back to the summer of 1956, I lived out the remainder of the story through Callie Ann's eyes. Marjorie Reynolds paints a clear and vivid picture of the little white house where Callie Ann lives, and the drive in across the grass that stays open all summer. As I absorbed chapter after chapter, all of my senses shifted into overdrive. It was easy to picture the brightly printed shirtwaister dresses that Callie Ann's mother wears, the hot gravel that lines the parking lot and the dreamy romantic entanglements that play themselves out on the big screen as well as below it. This book puts the reader in touch with the all of the wonderful elements of summer while focusing on the heartache of being twelve years old and not really knowing who to turn to when things get rough. I was even able to put faces on the characters, and would love to see this story made into a movie one day. A beautiful first novel!