Dairy Queen (novel)
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Dairy Queen, ISBN 0-618-68307-0, is a 2006 novel written by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.
[edit] Plot summary
The novel is about a 15-year-old girl named D.J. Schwenk,(Darlene Joyce, she is named after her two grandmothers) who lives on a farm in Red Bend, Wisconsin. During the summer, she is pressured into training a stubborn football player named Brian Nelson, who becomes the starting quarterback for the arch-rival football team because of DJ's training. Eventually, they become friends, and D.J. develops romantic feelings for Brian.
DJ's decision to try out for her high school (boys) football team is one of the biggest ideas from the story. (DJ's two older brothers Win and Bill were legends at her school and both play college football.) DJ withholds this information from Brian, and when he finally finds out their friendship is ruined because Brian feels like DJ betrayed him.
Throughout the summer, D.J. learns a lot about the people in her life. She also discovers that there is a lot of meaning in speaking out. Brian once says to her "when you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.". DJ and her family don't communicate effectively, her father rarely speaks to any of them except for her mother, her two older brothers are in the middle of a silent fight with her father, they have no contact with the family (until DJ finds out her mother has been communicating with them the whole time), and her younger brother speaks only when he is spoken to.
Part of DJ's struggle is that she was once a star athlete in volleyball and basketball. When her father hurt his hip, she had to take over all the responsibilities of running their dairy farm. Her only hopes of college were sports scholarships, and when she is forced to quit in order to run the farm, she starts slacking in school.
The sequel is called The Off Season.
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