Murdock, Catherine Gilbert (Catherine Gilbert)

PERSONAL:

Married James Murdock; children: two. Education: Bryn Mawr College, graduated 1988; University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—PA. Agent—Anderson Grinberg Literary Management, 244 5th Ave., 11th Fl., New York, NY 10001. E-mail—catherine_murdock@earthlink.net.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1998.

Dairy Queen: A Novel (young adult), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2006.

The Off Season (sequel to Dairy Queen), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2007.

ADAPTATIONS:

Dairy Queen: A Novel was adapted for audio, read by Natalie Moore, Listening Library, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Catherine Gilbert Murdock, whose sister Elizabeth Gilbert is a well-established writer, began her own writing career with a history titled Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol inAmerica, 1870-1940, in which she considers the part played by gender in the use of alcohol during that period. She notes that during most of the nineteenth century, alcohol consumption and its abuse were considered exclusively male traits, and the saloon where men congregated to enjoy their libations was thought to be a "bastion of maleness." Male drinking was considered, notes Murdock, to threaten "the values that respectable Americans, particularly respectable women, held dear." Consequently, women retaliated by attempting to prohibit alcohol use. James Kirby Martin wrote in the Journal of Social History, "Particularly useful is the author's discussion of the symbiotic relationship between the ‘pathologically intertwined’ campaigns for women's suffrage and National Prohibition, which involved all-out assaults on the powerful masculine political culture that allowed such havens of iniquity as saloons to exist in the first place."

Murdock does provide evidence that shows that women drank alcohol in the home but that the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which charged itself with the guardianship of American morals, would not acknowledge that fact. After 1900, women joined men to drink in public, and eventually, with the pressures of Prohibition, both men and women confined their drinking to the home. It's repeal did not reverse this trend, and bars and saloons never regained their previous popularity. W.J. Rorabaugh wrote in the Historian: "Murdock raises challenging questions. She shows that Prohibition was entwined with female suffrage and that women changed their minds about alcohol both as they redefined themselves and as they sought new gender roles."

Murdock was raised in rural Connecticut, and her first foray into fiction is a young adult novel set in rural Wisconsin. Dairy Queen: A Novel is narrated by fifteen-year-old D.J. Schwenk, the only girl in a household full of boys. Her two older brothers play college football, and her younger brother plays at the local school. The members of D.J.'s family do not convey their feelings easily, and there is an emotional chasm between her father and older brothers, while her younger brother, Curtis, barely speaks to anyone. When her father is injured, D.J. picks up the slack on their farm, milking cows, baling hay, and shoveling manure, all of which cuts into her basketball playing and studying time, resulting in lowered grades. D.J. coaches quarterback Brian Nelson, privileged and selfcentered star of the rival high school football team, at the request of his coach, a family friend. She falls for him, and then decides that she wants to try out for her own team.

Anita L. Burkam wrote in Horn Book that D.J. "invites readers into her confidence and then rewards them with an engrossing tale of love, family, and football." A Publishers Weekly contributor called Dairy Queen "a football book a girl can love." Murdock continues to explore her characters in the sequel, The Off Season, including D.J.'s best friend, Amber, who comes out in the first book.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 2006, Jennifer Hubert, review of Dairy Queen: A Novel, p. 150.

Historian, spring, 2001, W.J. Rorabaugh, review of Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940, p. 651.

Horn Book, May-June, 2006, Anita L. Burkam, review of Dairy Queen, p. 323.

Journal of Social History, summer, 2001, James Kirby Martin, review of Domesticating Drink, p. 1006.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006, review of Dairy Queen, p. 412.

Kliatt, May, 2006, Myrna Marler, review of Dairy Queen, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly, May 15, 2006, review of Dairy Queen, p. 73.

School Library Journal, April, 2006, Amy Pickett, review of Dairy Queen, p. 145; June, 2006, Rick Margolis, "Punt, Pass, Moo: In Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Dairy Queen, a Farm Gal Tackles a Guys's Game" (interview).