Dairy Queen

The Schwenks are not what you'd call big talkers.

D.J.'s little brother Curtis is so quiet they keep testing him at school to make sure he's okay. Her dad hasn't spoken to her two older brothers for months--but D.J. herself doesn't want to talk about what happened, thank you very much, so don't even ask.

Even so, D.J. is the one telling this story, and she tells it in a voice that's honest and funny, the kind of voice she'd use if you were her friend and she were complaining to you during a marathon phone conversation. In fact, D.J.'s life is filled with so much angst and heartache you expect her to wear black on the outside because black is how she feels on the inside, as the old Smiths song goes.

But D.J. is no grumpy goth girl. She lives on her family's dairy farm in Wisconsin, which she has run practically on her own all summer as her dad recuperates from hip surgery. She gets up at five every morning to do the milking and spends her sixteenth birthday baling clover, a hard sweaty job that she reports sarcastically was "amazingly wonderful." Also, as you might expect a Wisconsin farm girl to be, she's tall and strong, a talented basketball player, fast runner and a huge football fan. She couldn't not be this last one, since her brothers Bill and Win, the ones her dad isn't talking to, were the stars of her high school's football team, and back in the day her dad was its coach.

Which is sort of how she ends up in the odd predicament of training Brian Nelson, the quarterback for the snotty team the next town over. Odd because she's a girl, and who's ever heard of a teenage girl working as a football trainer? Predicament because, well, in their little town high school football is a really big deal. Helping the QB of her school's biggest rival wouldn't make her any more popular than she already is, which is not very, if anyone found out. But because his coach thinks it's a great idea, and because his coach is her dad's oldest friend, she can't very well say no.

Anyway, training turns out to be fun, more fun than D.J. has had during the last few difficult months. She turns a pasture on the farm into a football field by mowing it and marking it with lime, and under the hot summer sun on their makeshift field she runs out for Brian's passes, catching the ball every time, "like the raw egg at an egg toss...like a little baby." Training Brian to be a better player feels good because she's a good player herself. "It was my hobby. The way Mom does needlework sometimes even though let's face it, how many little scratchy pillows does one family really need."

Also? She likes spending time with Brian. He's definitely cute, but he's nice to talk to, too. Confiding in him, even to the small and pained extent that she does, helps her realize something kind of shocking: she's actually pretty angry about having to do all the farm work, and about the fact that doing all the farm work is the reason she's failing English. Angry too about the fact that her dad drove her brothers away, and that it really hurts to like Brian, who's the kind of guy who never likes the kind of girl she is.

Dairy Queen proceeds briskly, buoyed by D.J.'s bright voice that sometimes veers toward the too-cute but rescues itself with moments of touching honesty and real comedy. On the day she takes her little brother to the big city of Madison, for instance, "...I parked our cruddy old Caravan and went into a coffee shop, feeling about as comfortable as a gorilla, staring at everyone out of the corner of my eye until they probably thought I was there to rob them or something."

That's the most likable thing about this book: it turns some old ideas on their ear, not to be subversive but to be real. Lots of girls are *not* little and skinny, thank you very much, as D.J. would say. Some of them are more comfortable working a manure spreader than sitting in a chichi coffee house. And more still are like guys when it comes to talking--they'd rather keep quiet than risk sharing the way they really feel. Still, the risk is worth taking sometimes. As any football player knows, you can get hurt out there, but if you don’t play to win then you may as well not bother.