Whirligig

by Paul Fleischman

Brent Bishop wants to end the pain, the humiliation he suffered at a party. As he drives drunk, he lets go of the wheel of his car. The next thing he knows, he’s killed someone else instead of himself—18-year-old Lea Zamora, the driver of another car. Thanks to his parents’ wealth, Brent avoids the worst of the possible consequences. Yet he cannot live with the guilt, so he arranges for a meeting with Lea’s parents. Lea’s mother asks him to build four whirligigs and set them up in the four corners of the United States, in tribute to her daughter. She buys him a 45-day Greyhound bus pass with which to accomplish this mission. As Brent’s journey takes him to Maine, Florida, Washington State and San Diego, Calif., Paul Fleischman chronicles not only the ways in which the teen’s determination to accomplish this goal changes his life in myriad ways, but also--in alternating chapters--the effects of the four whirligigs on the people who encounter them. One single action, he suggests, can have unforeseen reverberations. Brent’s maturation takes him from a not-so-likable teen to an admirable young man.