Dirt by Laura Baggaley

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Click here to review Dirt on Amazon or here for alternative reader-led review sites.

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 a writer of fiction for young adults and children. Her latest book is an eco-romance, Dirt, published by Habitat Press. 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 and will be published by Neem Tree Press. She’s currently polishing a third novel which was longlisted for the Yeovil Literary Prize.

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.