Focus. Click. Wind.

by Amanda West Lewis

Overview

What if your country is involved in an unjust war, and you’ve lost trust in your own government?

It's 1968, and the Vietnam War has brought new urgency to the life of Billie Taylor, a seventeen-year-old aspiring photojournalist. Billie is no stranger to risky situations, but when she attends a student protest at Columbia Universitywith her college boyfriend, and the US is caught up in violent political upheaval, her mother decides to move the two of them to Canada. Furious at being dragged away from her beloved New York City to live in a backwater called Toronto, Billie doesn’t take her exile lightly. As her mother opens their home to draft evaders and deserters, Billie’s activism grows in new ways. She discovers an underground network of political protesters and like minds in a radical group based in Rochdale College, the world’s first “free” university. And the stakes rise when she is exposed to horrific images from Vietnam of the victims of Agent Orange – a chemical being secretly manufactured in a small town just north of Toronto.

Suddenly she has to ask herself some hard questions. How far will she go to be part of a revolution? Is violence ever justified? Or does standing back just make you part of the problem?

Key Text Features

author’s note

chapters

dialogue

epigraph

facts

historical context

literary references

song lyrics

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773068992
Publisher:	Groundwood Books
Publication date:	08/01/2023
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

AMANDA WEST LEWIS is the author of nine books for young readers, including two about Miranda Billie Taylor, These Are Not the Words and Focus. Click. Wind. Her books have been nominated for the Silver Birch Award, the Red Cedar Award, the Violet Downey IODE Award, the Snow Willow Award and others. She is a writer, theater creator, calligrapher, teaching artist and founder of the Ottawa Children’s Theatre. Amanda has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Born in New York City, Amanda now lives in Brooke Valley, Ontario, with her husband, writer Tim Wynne-Jones.

Read an Excerpt

Slow motion becomes freeze frame. A man in a plaid shirt, blood streaming down his face, is on his knees holding a sobbing woman. Another man frowns as he tucks what’s left of a torn shirt into his pants.... 

A filing cabinet spills a river of paper. Cigarette butts and paper plates are mashed into the carpet.

Photos from a war zone. Quietly she focuses, clicks and winds.

Exhaustion seeps through her pores. Three days in the trenches of democracy has used up her store of bravery. She wants to go home. She wants to put the skin of her old life back on and get into bed. 

But first she needs to get down the heavy marble stairs. She needs to stand under the bright lights and colorful murals in the subway at 116th. She needs to sit quietly, invisibly, in the urine-drenched subway car until she can slide into the elevator at 181st and let it deliver her to the murky surface of Washington Heights.

And then she needs to sneak back into the apartment without getting caught.

What People are Saying About This

Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Vivid language immerses us in the world of 1968 New York City and Toronto through the eyes of Billie, a gifted photographer whose commitment to social justice and ending the Vietnam War leads her to physical and moral danger as she rebels against a mother who will do anything to keep her safe. This tight, gripping story perfectly captures a time, place, and young woman who will go to any lengths to right wrongs.

Emil Sher

With a perfect touch and a seasoned hand, Amanda Lewis has crafted an artful coming-of-age story that pulses with youthful rage. Against a backdrop of bombs too far to hear yet so close to home, Lewis gives Billie Taylor a passionate voice, and a camera lens through which an aching, timeless truth is revealed: the casualties of war don’t end on a battlefield.

Ann Angel

I can’t get this book out of my head!

Leda Schubert

With dramatic scenes, fully-realized characters, and plenty of tension, Amanda West Lewis brings readers a story from that most consequential year, 1968. This novel recaptures the turbulence, confusion, horror, and tragedies so many of us experienced. Memorable and absorbing!

Editorial Reviews

Readers find they must respect [Billie's] diligence, her heartfelt devotion to an important cause and her desire to question the roles set out for her by her mom, her friends and, indeed, her government.

CM: Canadian Review of Materials

Focus. Click. Wind. by Amanda West Lewis leans into the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the late 1960s, but these details are merely a portal into something more significant: a depiction of the social consciousness of youth who were simultaneously navigating personal tragedy and government-sponsored violence.

Historical Novel Society

A fascinating young adult book that raises important questions about how young people should react when they disagree with their country’s actions. Is rebellion a legitimate option?

Winnipeg Free Press

A beautiful coming of age story set in a tumultuous time in history, where young people were using their voices and demanded to be heard … Focus. Click. Wind. will inspire readers to learn more about the war in Vietnam and the activisim that came out of that time period. If they live in Toronto, its an inspiration to see how Yorkville has changed so dramatically over time.

Storytime with Stephanie Blog

This book will engage readers while leaving them with lots to think about including how can one person make a difference during times of social unrest. 

Canadian Children’s Book News

Focus. Click. Wind. has more grit than many coming-of-age novels. 

Quill & Quire

2023-06-08
A 17-year-old uses her camera as a tool for political activism during the Vietnam War.

Billie Taylor is a white New York City high school student who is inspired by the work of the photojournalists she admires. She’s dating Columbia University freshman Dan Geller, her high school’s golden boy. Things come to a head when they attend an anti-war protest at Columbia that turns violent. Billie’s single mother, shaken both by the chaos of the nation and Billie’s father’s desertion of the family, gets a job in Toronto, feeling that Canada is a safer option. Billie resents having to move and makes plans to return to New York. But when her mother begins housing draft evaders, this political engagement leads Billie to connect with a group of radical Americans working against the war through whom she finds unexpected opportunities to fight back. The story is slow to get started, meandering through Billie’s traumatic childhood memories, Billie and Dan’s relationship, and Billie’s job waitressing at a strip club before she is presented with graphic, disturbing evidence of the horrors being perpetrated by the U.S. military in Vietnam and the chance to participate in the resistance. Readers may benefit from Lewis’ depiction of the day-to-day realities of young Americans and Canadians during the Vietnam War as well as explorations of the importance of protest and considerations of violence perpetrated in the name of a greater good.

Valuable historical content weighed down by a slow-moving plot. (source notes, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews