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Catherine Murdock grew up on a small farm in Connecticut, where she wisely avoided all sports involving hand-eye coordination. She now lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband, two brilliant unicycling children, several cats, and a one-acre yard that she is slowly transforming into a wee but flourishing ecosystem. She is the author of several books, including the popular Dairy Queen series starring lovable heroine D. J. Schwenk, the fantasy novel Princess Ben, and Front and Center.

Life is looking up for D. J. Schwenk, star of Dairy Queen. She’s made it to eleventh grade, she’s reconnecting with her best friend, and she’s got a thing going with Brian Nelson. But best of all, she’s playing for the Red Bend High School football team—as the first female linebacker in northern Wisconsin.
But then the season goes suddenly, horribly wrong: her brother Win is put into the hospital after getting a devastating injury during a game. Once again, D.J. is forced to step up and be there for her family. It’s a heavy burden, even for D.J.’s strong shoulders. She’ll have to dig deeper than she’s ever had to before.

KLIATT

To quote the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, July 2007: In Dairy Queen, a six-foot-tall female protagonist teaches a boy from a rival high school to play football, joins her own high school's football squad, and falls in love. In the autumn immediately following that memorable summer, D.J. Schwenk is now 16 and a solid player. Her older brothers are on football scholarships at prestigious universities. Every Saturday, the family watches her brothers play football on television; afterwards, the quarterback she trained, Brian Nelson, comes over to help with chores and make out with D.J. in the barn. Then, just about everything that can go wrong in such a teenager's life does. She sustains a football injury and has to quit the team. She discovers her parents are more strapped for money than she realized. She finds her "boyfriend" is ashamed of her in public. Her mother's back goes out and D.J. takes on more farm chores. Then, to add the final straw to this camel's back, her brother Win breaks his neck playing football, and the scene shifts to hospital trauma wards and spinal cord rehabilitation facilities. For a while, it seems the author piles on every obstacle conceivable to D.J.'s happiness, but D.J. ultimately prevails. Following up the theme in the first novel about the importance of speaking up when necessary, this novel adds that actions speak louder than words. The main character is likable and certainly not an example of boilerplate teenage angst. D.J. has qualities uniquely her own that readers can relate to, sympathize with and ultimately admire. (An ALA Best Book for YAs.) Reviewer: Myrna Marler