RED SANDS

About the Book

In the desert outside El Paso stands an aging drive-in movie theater named after the unusual patch of rust-colored sand on which it was built: the Red Sands. Twenty years ago it was a state-of-the-art cinematic oasis; now, in the summer of 1982, it's a dilapidated relic, host mainly to B-list exploitation movies, Friday-night drunks, local trailer-trash, and a shady cast of employees.

But during that same extraordinary summer the Red Sands Drive-In will undergo a brief renaissance, brought on partly by the efforts of three "square peg" high-school kids, and partly by the release of the popular movie E.T.-The Extra-Terrestrial. In the process they will come to know the drive-in's owner, whose past holds more than one terrible secret, and they'll be drawn into a feud between him and a rival businessman. What follows is more than any of them bargained for, including a showdown with a major high-school bully, an unofficial "exorcism" on the drive-in itself, a blossoming teenage romance or two and, just maybe, one teenager's learning to make peace with his mother's death.

About the Author

James O?Keeffe was raised, educated, and still resides in El Paso, Texas. Red Sands is his first published novel.