The Starlite Drive-In -- Marjorie Reynolds

This book has one of the best first paragraphs that I've read in a long time:

I wasn't there when they dug up the bones at the old drive-in theater, but I heard about them within the hour. In a small town, word travels like heat lightening across a parched summer sky. Irma Schmidt phoned Aunt Bliss and delivered the news with such volume that her voice carried across the kitchen to where I was sitting.

This book reminded me of Lone Star. Without the incest. It was hot (Indiana summer, not Texas) and it started with old bones being discovered, then switched to flashback. Okay, other than that it wasn't really similar. Although I could picture Chris Cooper in a movie version.

Callie Anne lives at the Starlite Drive-In with her parents. Her dad runs the place and her mom hasn't left the house in five years. Then a drifter named Charlie Memphis comes to town.

The weird thing about the book was that even though it's marketed as a YA book, and it's about a YA... it didn't really feel like a YA book. Maybe because the story is told by Callie Anne when she's grown up, in her mid 40s?