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&#146;s a dilapidated relic, host mainly to B-list exploitation movies, Friday-night drunks, local trailer-trash, and a shady cast of employees.</p> But during that same extraordinary summer the Red Sands Drive-In will undergo a brief renaissance, brought on partly by the efforts of three &#147;square peg&#148; high-school kids, and partly by the release of the popular movie E.T.&#151;The Extra-Terrestrial. In the process they will come to know the drive-in&#146;s owner, whose past holds more than one terrible secret, and they&#146;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 &#147;exorcism&#148; on the drive-in itself, a blossoming teenage romance or two…and, just maybe, one teenager&#146;s learning to make peace with his mother&#146;s death.</P>