In this 1950’s coming of age story, told in retrospect, Callie Anne Benton recalls the summer thirty-six years earlier, she was twelve, living at the Starlite Drive-In near Jessup, Indiana when Charlie Memphis, a drifter, came into their lives and changed everything for Callie and her mother Teal. Bones have been found on the theater property in present day; from the items found with the bones, Callie surmises that they belong to Charlie Memphis, a handyman who was hired to help out her father, Claude Junior, who manages the drive-in, but because of a bad leg is unable to do many of the maintenance tasks, one summer at the drive-in. Both twelve-year-old Callie and her mother Teal, housebound because of fear of going outside, fall in love with Charlie Memphis, and when Teal and Charlie Memphis begin to act on their mutual feelings, Callie experiences a range of emotions from anger to jealousy to feelings of self-doubt to shock when she realizes her mother is a woman other than Claude Junior’s wife and Callie’s mother. Claude Junior is abusive toward his wife and daughter, but is shocked when he realizes Teal, through her relationship with Charlie Memphis, has overcome many of her phobias and is able to confront his abusive ways. Callie begins a budding relationship with fifteen-year-old Virgil who works at the box office and rescues an injured turtle that becomes a metaphor for both Callie and her mother, though might have been more effective had it been introduced earlier.
The Starlite Drive-In, originally published in 1997, now reprinted, is a sweet, nostalgic coming of age story, though told through grown-up Callie’s eyes, is lacking in a certain amount of innocence & confusion twelve-year-old Callie must have felt. A local man Billy, who has returned from the war with what we now know as Post Traumatic Stress disorder, becomes an alternate possible victim whose bones have been found in present day, but Callie knows that the bones belong to Charlie Memphis. The present day mystery is wrapped up a little quickly, and had Teal’s reactions been explored more it would have only added to this well-written first novel.
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