First published 2006
D.J. Schwenk keeps quiet about everything that matters. The fifteen-year-old lives on her family's dairy farm in Red Bend, Wisconsin, where silence has become her default response to a world full of complications. Her former best friend Amber has turned cold and distant. Her little brother Curtis refuses to speak at all. Her mother juggles two jobs while hiding something important. Her college football star brothers never call home anymore. Her father would explode if he knew she wanted to try out for the high school football team. And Brian Nelson, who dares to tell her that staying silent leaves too much unsaid, seems impossibly out of her reach. But this summer becomes the season when D.J. finally finds her voice. As she begins to speak up about the things that have been weighing on her heart, she discovers she has more to say than she ever imagined.
Genres: family-life, american-fiction, contemporary, adolescence
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, self-discovery
Setting: Red Bend, Wisconsin
Period: 21st-century
275 pages · Hardcover · Houghton Mifflin