The Starlite Drive-In

by Marjorie Reynolds

Overview

“A captivating novel.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Reynolds creates a genuine and engaging young narrator…and maintains heat and suspense on every page.”
—Detroit Free Press

A mystery, a coming of age novel, a tragic love story, a rich evocation of a memorable time and place in America, The Starlite Drive-In by Marjorie Reynolds is all of these things and more. The author returns readers to the summer of 1956 in this riveting story that reviewers have enthusiastically compared to the Harper Lee classic, To Kill a Mockingbird—as the arrival of a handsome drifter at a rundown drive-in movie theater inflames dangerous passions and jealousies, and changes a young girl’s life forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062092649
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/22/2011
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Formerly a newspaper reporter and a movie advertising executive, Marjorie Reynolds teaches writing workshops throughout Washington and Oregon. The author of the novel The Civil Wars of Jonah Moran, Reynolds lives in Washington State.

Editorial Reviews

"A believable tale about real people, likely to engage the memory chords of any reader."

-- Orange County Register

From the Publisher

Reynolds creates a genuine and engaging young narrator in Callie Anne and maintains heat and suspense on every page.

Detroit Free Press

Reynolds tidily explores the gap between fantasy and reality in her surely told first novel. -- NY Times Book Review

Megan Harlan

The open space of a rural Indiana drive-in theater in 1956 provides an ironic backdrop for this moving first novel, a story of confinement and entrapment, and of events that can free the spirit at long last. When human remains are found at the long-abandoned theater site, Callie Anne Benton, now 49, must look back at the summer of her 13th year. It's easy to guess the identity of the body; it's easy, too, to figure out who killed him. The tension of the narrative derives from the family drama that leads to the murder, which also marks Callie Anne's achingly poignat coming-of-age. As the daughter of the Starlite Drive-in manager, she lives at the edge of the grounds and learns to follow dialogue onscreen and otherwise from a removed vantage point. Her father, Claude Junior, is thoroughly mean-spirited and violently abusive, though it's clear that he's both trapped and thwarted by his wife Teal's agoraphobia. After Claude suffers a debilitating injury in a fall, he hires drifter Charlie Memphis to do the heavy labor; at night when Claude runs the projector, Charlie is coaxing Teal out of her house and into his arms. Though the killing is predictable, the steps to the act and its resolution are paced with unflagging tension and a sure sense of how the world looks from a young girl's eyes. A B&N Discover Great New Writers Program selection.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When developers find a body in a well at the old Starlite Drive-In, Callie Ann Benton knows whose body it is. It takes her back to when she was 12; her father ran the drive-in, and her mother, Teal, had become completely trapped inside her house by agoraphobia. It traps her father, too, forcing him to give up dreams, and his resentment comes out in nasty sniping, continuous put-downs that drain her until a drifter named Charlie Memphis arrives, falls in love with Teal, and plans to take her and Callie away. This stunning novel is told by 12-year-old Callie, torn between her crush on Memphis, her love for her father, and her resentment of her mother's sexuality and personhood. But the grown-up sensibility of Callie permeates this book; she understands that we are all trapped, that we help to create our traps, and that we are the only ones who can free ourselves from these traps. Recommended for all libraries. Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.

Library Journal

During the long, hot summer of 1956 in rural Indiana, Callie Anne Benton, almost 13, is stuck at home on the grounds of the Starlite Drive-in. Her agoraphobic mother has not left the house in five years, trapping her embittered father, who manages the facility, in a job he has grown to hate. Callie Anne is happiest when she is watching movies with her father in the projection booth. The arrival of a drifter, Charlie Memphis, hired to work at the drive-in, promises to make the summer more bearable. Callie Anne, at first enamored of his charms, grows alarmed as she watches the man's kindness toward her mother and the growing relationship between the two. When he coaxes Teal out of the house and perhaps out of her husband's life, Callie Anne is faced with some difficult choices. A disastrous turn of events teaches her the complexities of love and loss. Young adults will enjoy this study of divided loyalties, told in the voice of the grown-up Callie Anne, as she tries to sort out the secrets of that tumultuous summer. Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

School Library Journal

The discovery of a skeleton evokes memories of a 1950s summer roiled by passions, innocent and profane, and redeemed by abiding loyalties. When 49-year-old Callie Anne learns that human bones have been found on the site of the old Starlite Drive-in, she can't follow her aunt's advice to "leave it be." Instead, she drives to the site, recognizes objects buried with the body, and slips one of them into her purse. She isn't being ghoulish—the object in question is an artifact of her past, taking her back to 1956 and the summer when the drifter Charlie Memphis came into her family's life. Callie Anne, an only child, lived then with her mother Teal and father Claude on the grounds of the drive-in theater Claude managed. Back then, Teal, unnerved by Claude's bullying and constant criticism, hasn't left the house for five years, and Claude himself, feeling trapped in his job and the small Indiana town they live in, dreams only of escape. And so the arrival of handsome Charlie Memphis, whom Claude takes on to help with maintenance, heats up an already tense situation. The 13-year-old Callie Anne, who watches movies nightly with Claude, decides that she's in love with Charlie, and Teal—a gentle and loving woman—is also smitten. Then Callie Anne, piecing disparate information and hearsay together with reports of stolen money, concludes that Charlie is a convicted murderer. As Claude's jealousy increases, Callie Anne's apprehensions mount, barely relieved by her first romance with teenage ticket-taker Virgil. Matters come to their inevitable head when Charlie disappears after Callie Anne has witnessed a fight between him and her father, and Teal, confronted by Claude, moves outbriefly. Now, years later, Callie Anne finally discovers Charlie's fate, but Teal, who loyally came back to Claude, can't accept what those bones mean.

A sweetly unpretentious tale of a defining summer that taught a young girl too much about love and life. An accomplished debut.

Kirkus Reviews