What Was on My Bookstand? Focus. Click. Wind.

I’m always fascinated by different perspectives on history. Sometimes that fascination leads me to nonfiction picture books, sometimes it leads me to books for older readers. Over the holidays, my curiosity about the Vietnam War led me to Amanda West Lewis’s Focus. Click. Wind., which released in August and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by The Globe & Mail. Like many who grew up in the United States, my impressions of the Vietnam War were formed by the way that conflict was presented within our 50 states. That is why I was so intrigued by West Lewis’s most recent young adult historical novel. Focus. Click. Wind. provides a view of the Vietnam War from another side—from the Canadian side—the land that attracted young men who did not want to participate in the war. The novel opens in 1968 New York, but soon into the story, 17-year-old Billie Taylor is taken to Ontario by her mother. Billie does everything she can to get back to New York so she can take a stand against the war with her voice and camera. But when she discovers that Canada is also implicated in the war—that there is a factory outside of Toronto making Agent Orange—she stays put and uses her photographic talents to raise awareness there.

Amanda West Lewis

Drawing from personal experience, when West Lewis’s own mother moved her from New York to Toronto in 1963, Focus. Click. Wind. is pumped full of historical, cultural, and sensorial details. I learned a lot, that’s for sure. But the real strength of Focus. Click. Wind. is the way it zooms in on the lives of different characters who are opposed to the war. It shows the impact that their decisions had on the world and their own lives. Billie becomes a waitress in a strip club so that she can earn the money she needs to expose the truths she sees through her camera. Billie’s boyfriend Dan joins the military with the hope of protesting from within. Billie’s mother opens her home to conscientious objectors. Others try to live the peace that they hope the world can achieve. Still others combine their anger with drugs. The story is gritty and raw and full of rage. And because of that, it is haunting. It raises important questions about how best to act out civil disobedience. What kind of activism really changes the world? And what toll does activism take on those who try to create change? In broader terms, Focus. Click. Wind. asks: What do we need to do to make our lives mean something? This is an excellent choice for high school libraries and history departments—but also for anyone who wants to broaden their understanding of the Vietnam War and the activists who opposed it. The conversations that Focus. Click. Wind. will generate will be invaluable.

Focus. Click. Wind. by Amanda West Lewis

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? If you would like to order Focus. Click. Wind., you can find it at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and bookshop.org.

You can learn more about Amanda West Lewis at amandawestlewis.com, on Twitter at @AmandaWestLewis, on Instagram at @amandawestlewis and on Facebook at @amandawest.lewis.