Focus. Click. Wind.
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 University with 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
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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.
Readers may benefit from Lewis' ... explorations of the importance of protest and considerations of violence perpetrated in the name of a greater good.
-- "Kirkus"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"
