YA novel #1 - Whirligig by Paul Fleischman

Really, I picked this book up because it had a cool cover and i liked the word "whirligig." Which, come to find out, is an actual thing you can build that has spinning arms or parts when the wind blows. The premise of this book is that there is this extremely self-absorbed teenager. Obsessed with being popular and his dad moves around a lot. He over analyzes everything to make sure that he is what other people think he should be. After a bad experience at a party, he drives home (beyond the legal intoxication limit) and decides to kill himself by letting his car swerve in the other lane. He lives, the other driver, a high school senior, dies. The girl's mother sends him on a trip to of penance building whirligigs in the four corners of the country. It tells the stories of the people who find them as well as his own. Cool, lots of irony.