• Age: 10 to 13
• Grade: 3
• Reading age: 8 to 9

Fourteen-year-old Madeline Snow is the star goalie and captain of her girls rep hockey team in Burnaby, British Columbia. So when her RCMP sergeant father moves the family to his new posting in Fort St. James, a remote town in northern BC, she feels like she is losing a lot.

In her new town Maddie is more unhappy than ever. Things begin to turn around when she discovers she has made the town's only Bantam team, a boys team called the Stars, but since they have a skilled goalie in Connor Spencer, Maddie wonders if she will ever get to play.

When Connor dies in a car accident, Maddie is overwhelmed with sadness and guilt for having thought that only if Connor were hurt would she get to play. But Maddie has become part of the community, and her friends and the natural surroundings in Fort St. James help her to find the focus she needs to fill the net that Connor's death has left empty.

David Starr is a prize-winning author of five previous books. In The Nor’Wester, he told Duncan’s story of fleeing Scotland to Canada, where he joins Simon Fraser on his epic 1808 voyage by canoe down the Fraser. Bombs to Books chronicles the stories of refugee children and their families coming to B.C. Golden Goal and Golden Game are young adult soccer-themed books for reluctant readers. The Insider’s Guide to K–12 Education in B.C. is a resource guide for parents about the B.C. school system. David grew up in Fort St. James in northern British Columbia, and he now lives in Greater Vancouver with his wife, four children and a dog named Buster. He is one of the UBC Faculty of Education’s Top 100 Graduates and a school administrator in Metro Vancouver. For further information and readings availability, visit www.davidstarr.org.

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