by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
The author of The Dairy Queen Trilogy (The Dairy Queen, The Off Season, and Front and Center) has never played football, is not a dairy farmer, and, in her author picture, is wearing a demure black sweater and pearls. And you wouldn't guess any of this unless you read the author blurbs in the back of the books. The voice of D.J. Schwenk, our main character, shines through with such a degree of authenticity that you might wonder if Catherine Gilbert Murdock were writing her autobiography (for the record – she’s not).
The summer before her junior year of high school is not much fun for DJ Schwenk. Her family owns a dairy farm, but money is tight. And with her mother as the interim principal for the elementary school, her younger brother Curtis at baseball practice half of the day, her older brothers Win and Bill at a prestigious football camp, and her Dad recovering from a leg injury, all of the farm work, including the twice-daily milking, cleaning the barn, mowing and haying, falls to DJ. On top of all that, she has make-up essays to write to turn her F in sophomore English into a passing grade. To say that DJ is overwhelmed is an understatement.
“Help” comes in the form Brian Nelson, the spoiled, lazy quarterback of DJ’s high school’s most bitter rival – Hawley. Brian’s coach, a friend of DJ’s family, essentially said that if Brian wants to be the starting quarterback in the fall, he needed to adjust his attitude and begin conditioning. And the best way to do that, apparently, is to help with the work on the Schwenk farm.
DJ, who knows a lot about football, realizes pretty quickly that Brian needs more than just the strength and endurance he will get from farm work to be in shape for football season. She becomes Brian’s trainer, and as the summer progresses, she and Brian learn a lot about each other. And DJ learns that despite a life of living up to other people’s expectations, she may just have the courage to try some unexpected things after all.
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The Dairy Queen is about so much more than football and farming. DJ is a fabulous narrator – self-deprecating, funny, and honest. She’s also open-minded, and willing to think through new ideas, such as the importance of communication, even when you are raised in a family that’s better at silence than speaking. And there’s a lot for her family to talk about – like why her older brothers and her father aren’t speaking to each other or why her mother spends all her time at work. As she and Brian settle into a routine of farm work and football conditioning, it’s not just Brian learning about hard work and football; DJ learns that there’s more to life than farming and schoolwork; that even spoiled and arrogant quarterbacks have depth of personality once you get to know them; and that even when it’s scary to do the unexpected, it can be the thing you need to do most of all.
