FOCUS. CLICK. WIND
NOMINATED BY THE CANADIAN CHILDREN'S BOOK CENTRE FOR THE 2024
GEOFFREY BILSON AWARD FOR HISTORICAL FICTION FOR YOUNG ADULTS
What the jurors said:
“In this coming-of-age novel, author Amanda West Lewis has created a character in Billie of a young adult who learns of the often-harsh realities of becoming an activist… Thought provocative and engaging, West transports you to the era of social justice… Deep parallels can be drawn between the events of 1968 and 2024. The questions that 17-year-old Billie Taylor contends with are the same questions being asked by young people today.”
Listed as a Best Book of 2023 by The Globe & Mail
It's 1968
What if your country is fighting a war that deliberately kills innocent people, and your government wants you to be part of the murder machine?
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 University with her college boyfriend, and Senator Bobby Kennedy is assassinated, her mother decides to move 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. 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.
The stakes rise when Billie is confronted with the horrific images from Vietnam of the victims of Agent Orange — a chemical being secretly manufactured in a small town just north of Toronto.
Suddenly Billie 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?
The rail bridge outside of Elmira, Ontario...
What people are saying about
FOCUS. CLICK. WIND.
“A gripping, genre-defying novel, Focus. Click. Wind. is fully engaging from the start. Lewis’ plotting is flawless, her prose exquisite. A masterpiece.”
Bobbie Jean Huff,
author of The Ones We Keep
“This tight, gripping story perfectly captures a time, place, and young woman who will go to any lengths to right wrongs.”
Lyn Miller-Lachmann
author of LA Times Book Prize-winning YA novel Torch.
“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.”
“With dramatic scenes, fully-realized characters, and plenty of tension, Amanda West Lewis brings readers a story from that most consequential year, 1968. Memorable and absorbing!”
Leda Schubert,
award-winning author of picture books including Marcel Marceau: Actor Without Words; Firsts and Lasts: The Changing Seasons; and Listen: How Pete Seeger Got America.
Emil Sher,
award winning author of
Young Man with Camera
and other works for the stage, screen, and page
“I can’t get this book out of my head!”
Ann Angel,
author of YALSA Award winning
Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing
