| Pages: | 226 pages |
| Dimensions: | 12.7 x 1.45 x 20.32 cm / 308g |
| Publisher: | Habitat Press |
| Date Published: | 22 May 2025 |
| ISBN-10: | 1739088980 |
| ISBN-13: | 978-1739088989 |
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More about the book
The novel Dirt was inspired by a newspaper article about soil. Here, the author Laura Baggaley describes how the book came about:
“I was first inspired to write Dirt by an article I read about soil. It described vividly the millions of tiny life forms in a single teaspoon of earth and the difference between living soil and dead dirt. I’ve always been fascinated by agriculture and where our food comes from, and I’m hugely concerned about soil degradation and erosion. The newspaper piece led me to imagine a world where global food supply chains have failed due to climate change and what would happen if we all had to grow our own.
So, in the world of Dirt, everyone lives on rations and supplements their food by growing as much as they can on government-allotted ‘Squares’ of land. Sam, a teenage boy, lives in a town where farming is controlled by a huge agribusiness that dictates what crops they plant and how they manage them, pushing them to use pesticides, grow monocrops and use fossil-fuel fertilisers.
My other main character, Avril, comes from a completely different world. She lives in a beautiful hidden valley where her extended family practises sustainable agriculture. One day, she sneaks out of the valley to explore and encounters Sam. The collision of their different ways of thinking about how to farm and how to live is what drives the story. So it’s a kind of Romeo and Juliet story (without the tragic deaths!) where the background conflict is between damaging growing practices versus farming in harmony with nature.
Another thing I really wanted to do with the book was to create a near-future world in which there have been lots of positive changes as well as negative ones. Although the setting in Dirt is partly dystopian, the society has made a lot of improvements. Everyone has solar panels and heat pumps as standard. People cycle or take cheap electric taxis. It’s the norm to repair, upcycle and reuse stuff. Industrial animal farming has been banned… The one thing they haven’t fixed is agriculture, so that’s the backdrop to Sam and Avril’s growing relationship (pun intended!).”
To hear more about the writing of Dirt, you can read an interview between the author and Denise Baden, founder of Habitat Press. Find out more about Laura Baggaley at her website.
Reviews
“This is an authentically thrutopian work: that is to say, it charts a viable path through the dystopian-ish challenges that we (and, especially, young people) are without doubt going to face in the next generation or two. And it does so with panache. It’s a cracking read!” Emeritus Prof. Rupert Read, Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project and author of Why Climate Breakdown Matters (Bloomsbury).
“Dirt is so fantastic! A realistic, engaging and research-driven take on our climate future – Laura has delivered an exceptionally well crafted novel perfect for teen readers.” Wren James, award-winning YA author of many books including Last Seen Online, Green Rising and The Quiet at the End of the World.
“By the end, Dirt wasn’t just a story about survival – it was about hope and resilience. For a YA read, it carries weight, but it never loses its gentleness or its sense of possibility. Even as an adult reader, I was completely absorbed and left thinking about it long after the last page.” (MomoBookDiary)
“Every so often, a book comes along that feels like a breath of fresh air – the kind of story that reminds us why we love curling up with a good read. Laura Baggaley’s Dirt was one of those surprises for me. ” (The Phantom Paragrapher)
“Dirt is such a good book that it’s definitely in my top 3!” (R, age 11)
“After reading Dirt it should make other young people feel hopeful and want to take action because I think I know what the moral of the story is – it’s to create a more beautiful and better future and if the moral reached in the reader’s heart and mind like it did in mine then I think that we could be seeing more green life and show more of Earth’s true colours.” (T, age 13)
“The magic of DIRT is that it offers a hopeful and inspiring way out of this darkness that is pragmatic and practical, with characters you root for (pun most definitely intended). It’s a story that has much to offer adults as well as younger readers. Highly recommended!” (M, age – grown up!)
School/library visits
If you think your library, school or book group would welcome a visit from Laura, do get in touch (in person visits mainly London/South UK).
About the Author
Laura is an award-winning writer of fiction for young adults and children. Her latest book is an eco-romance, Dirt, published by Habitat Press, which won Gold Medal for Best Book for Teenagers in the 2025 Wishing Shelf Book Awards. Habitat Press will be bringing out Laura’s second book in 2026: Nourish, which was longlisted for the Yeovil Literary Prize.
She’s on the editorial team of Bending The Arc, a thrutopia magazine, which publishes stories, poems and features that bend the arc of the possible towards a thriving future on Earth. Her novel, Enough, was one of three finalists in the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition and longlisted for the Times / Chicken House Children’s fiction Competition.
Laura is a firm believer in ‘imagination activism’ and loves books that ask big questions, usually starting ‘What if . . . ?’ She enjoys the challenge of creating alternative possible futures in her writing, and hopes that by imagining different worlds we’ll be able to build a better one. You can find her at www.laurabaggaley.co.uk or follow her on Instagram or LinkedIn.
admin (verified owner) –
I love this book. I see it as a kind of Romeo and Juliet but with a happy ending. Who knew an eco-romance about regenerative farming could be such a page turner! The characters were relatable and engaging and I found the near-future setting believable and interesting. This would be a great one for book clubs, especially to attract younger readers. Although I’m not young myself and still enjoyed it.
L Davis –
I didn’t expect to love Dirt as much as I did—but I was hooked from the first page. It’s a near-future story where food is strictly controlled and people grow what they can on tiny government plots. Then along comes Avril, a curious girl from somewhere totally different, and she turns Sam’s world upside down.
Their connection is sweet and believable, and I really enjoyed how the chapters switch between their points of view. It made both characters feel real and easy to root for. The contrast between their two lives—the dusty, rationed town and the more hopeful world Avril comes from—was so vivid I could see it all.
Even though it’s dystopian, the book doesn’t feel dark or depressing. It’s full of hope, with a message about change and community that feels really timely right now. The environmental themes are clear but never heavy-handed.
This is a great read for teens and adults alike. Thoughtful, heartfelt, and surprisingly uplifting—I’ll be recommending this one to everyone.
Chris –
Well written and easy to read with a great plot. Manages to be both slightly dystopian and utopian at the same time
Rod Raglin –
Dirt has more holes than a garden ready for planting
In the not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Sam and his family live in NewBeck, a small, arid, town on the edge of nowhere in an undisclosed country.
The population of Newbeck as well as the rest of the country survive primarily on meagre crops raised on tiny allotments. Each spring, the scientists at Green Cultivation Corporation, a mega-agri-conglomerate that also supplies soil and fertilizer, decide what crops would be best for each area that year. Then they bring four selections for people to buy and for some reason, the citizens have been conditioned into believing these crops are the only choices they have.
Every year, the citizens worry whether they’ll be able to afford enough soil, how much the extra fertiliser will cost and if it’s worth it, whether they’ll be able to buy all four of that year’s crop seeds, will the seeds germinate and thrive and if they do will the plants be labour intensive. On occasion, when crops have failed near famine conditions have prevailed
One afternoon, while Sam’s dutifully weeding the family’s government garden allotment, he notices a girl about his age ride into town on a rusty bicycle. He’s curious, she’s forward, and they strike up a conversation about farming and school. Then she leaves the way she came.
“There were no buildings or other roads where she was heading. So where the hell did the strange girl come from?”
Where this strange girl came from and is heading back to is just a forty-minute bicycle ride from town, a waterhole, fed by a stream with a waterfall. Once she arrives, she ducks behind a waterfall, navigates through a labyrinth of caves until she emerges “into Home Valley… a multitude of fields and gardens spread out before her in all their colourful variety.”
Home Valley is populated by her extended family who live there in seclusion and fear. Years earlier “strangers had swarmed the valley” and plundered their crops and destroyed most of the planting. In response to the raid, the patriarch had blocked the road into the valley and forbade any family members from leaving it. Only every couple of months when supplies are needed, does he leave the sanctuary and venture into town – alone.
Avril’s visit has piqued her curiosity. She wants to know more about the town’s people, especially Sam.
This curiosity and her attraction to Sam are the catalyst that gradually help them as individuals and the groups they’re associated with to go from fear and mistrust to care and cooperation. The knowledge shared by Avril’s family results in better crops and provides the motivation for the Townids to stand up against the agricultural megacorporation and take control of their own destiny – and gardens.
Habitat Press, the publishers, present Dirt as a “dystopian eco-romance for young adults (ten to 18 years old). Having read the book, three questions immediately arise; has author Laura Baggaley (and the publisher) underestimated the sophistication of their readers, has the publisher made a mistake and should the book have been marketed as Middle Grade fiction (readers aged 8-12), or is this simply a case of weak craft?
Editors note: This review has been shortened to remove plot spoilers.
Nancy –
This YA story was very fun and did a great job exploring the dichotomy of industrial farming vs sustainable farming.
Refilwe Sorinyane (verified owner) –
“Dirt” is more than just a book; it’s a powerful and thought-provoking journey. The author masterfully weaves a compelling narrative that is both entertaining and educational, demonstrating perfectly how fiction can be a powerful vehicle for change. The story’s themes of environmental responsibility and stewardship are handled with a gentle touch, making the reader care deeply about the natural world without feeling lectured. It’s a prime example of why the Habitat Press mission is so important. I highly recommend “Dirt” to anyone looking for a story that is as impactful as it is enjoyable.
KB –
Whilst I am not the target age demographic for Dirt; I enjoyed it very much. I seriously think it merits a sequel or more.
I am mindful of the book (later a film) called ‘The City of Ember’; also aimed at a younger demographic. The City of Ember – the book – is one of a quartet (the ‘Books of Ember’) and the second book, ‘The People of Sparks’, deals with the people of Ember not being able to grow enough food and the conflicts that ensue.
The same themes – insiders/outsiders and powerful vested interests – run through Dirt and how co-operation can be a thread that ensures community cohesion and betterment.
Dirt covers many eco themes – both tech and nature/biodiversity/food – and does so in a clever non-preaching way as incidents and components within the story.
As such, I think there’s a lot more mileage in ‘Dirt’ beyond this single book.
I note that Laura Baggaley credits Denise Baden with informing her about compost. As we know – and the book Dirt explains – one of the things that converts ‘dirt’ into soil is compost! From soil comes food and from food comes community.
Tony Emerson –
Review of the novel ‘Dirt’ by Laura Baggaley
Laura Baggaley (2025). ‘Dirt’, Habitat Press, UK
I started reading this book in a spirit of ‘duty’, of supporting a fellow writer of climate fiction. For this story was written for the teenage market, and my teens were more than six decades ago asnd our children are both in their mid-thirties. So I expected I’d dutifully read a few pages each evening before settling down with a story I really wanted to read.
But after reading the first few chapters I was gripped. It’s a story about a romance between two very courageous, and likeable, 15 year-olds. But two young people living in very different worlds just a few miles away from each other, in the early 22nd century. Avril lives in a small isolated farming community, whose members distrust the ‘townids’, as they call the town dwellers. So distrustful that they close off all routes into their farms, and they forbid any of their members to have any contact with the townids. This distrust arose because of a raid a few years back that left their members starving that year.
Sam’s family are townids. The townids are effectively ruled by GreenCorp who own their land and control all supplies, especially supplies of seeds and soil. Each family is allocated a meagre square on which to grow food. Nearly all townids are hungry most of the time.
But Avril decided to defy her family and the community elders and cycle into the town. And when Sam sees this strangely clad girl cycling up a street his curiosity is aroused. And more than his curiosity, as the story unfolds. He too is forbidden by his father to have any contact with this stranger, who comes bearing gifts of strange seeds and plants (strawberries!!) Sam and Avril have to battle with their families, and both the farm community and the townids have to battle with GreenCorp, who send in their heavy mob when the natives become insubordinate.
But in the process of battling with GreenCorp, farmers and townids learn to work together and realise they have lots to learn from each other. The townids recognise that the farmers have a lot of knowledge that they need. The elders in the farming community realise that their young people would benefit by being part of a larger community. While Avril and Sam settle some differences that have arisen between them and their love blossoms, like many of the plants they have helped to grow.
So, love will win out in the end. But apart from enjoying a romantic story, I liked the credible assumptions Laura Baggaley makes about how a society might adapt to the existential climate challenges, to the extremes of weather, the food shortages and other resource constraints, and the consequent societal upheavals. This book looks at the political, the parochial and the personal dimension. Also, as an ex-management lecturer I particularly liked the way the new, expanded town community was giving thought to issues like task distribution, leadership skills and local banking (ala the Bristol £ and the Brixton £.)
Whatever age you are you can enjoy this read.
Tony Emerson (Author of Creating Hope in the valley of the Bourne and Bournebridge over troubled waters, two cli-fi ebooks available on Amazon and Kobo)