A delightful story. The trials and tribulations of a sixteen year old.
The Off Season
Book Two of the Dairy Queen Trilogy
by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Graphia
2008
Darlene Joyce (DJ) Schwenk attends Red Bend High School. She is on the football team as a linebacker - the only female linebacker in northern Wisconsin. She lives on a dairy farm that seems to always be in financial trouble. Sports is in her blood. Her older brother Win is starting quarterback for the University of Washington and her other brother Bill is a sophomore linebacker for the University of Minnesota. DJ likes football, but her real passion is basketball. She hopes to win a full scholarship playing basketball for a major university.
Things are looking up for DJ. She has made it to the eleventh grade and is on the girl’s basketball team. Then her world comes tumbling down. Her father has surgery. She is forced to quit the team and take care of the farm. She learns her best friend is a lesbian. This doesn't bother her too much, but the other students are saying terrible things about Amber. To DJ Amber is Amber regardless of her feelings towards a girl.
DJ has become friends with Brian Nelson a rival football player from another high school. Brian is from a privileged family and his coach thinks he should have some work experience so he sends him to work at the Schwenk dairy farm. DJ soon has feelings for Brien but he seems to only want to see her in private - never asking her out on a date or to hang out with his friends. She feels he is embarrassed by her. She is not sophisticated like the other girls and feels more at ease around her football buddies than with other girls and boys.
Highly recommended. The Dairy Queen Trilogy is a must read if you are sixteen or sixty. Look for the author's next book Front and Center. You will enjoy it as much as the first two.
