| 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?
Beginning with inciting incident, Sam’s and Avril’s personal relationship lacks intensity. At an age (fifteen years old) when physical attractiveness is perhaps the most important attribute, there isn’t one descriptive passage about the main characters. The reader doesn’t know whether they’re tall or petite, dark or fair, handsome or beautiful. The author does mention that Avril “raised her pale eyebrows”, but incredibly doesn’t say the colour of the eyes beneath them.
Neither is there a hint of sexual attraction at a time in life when hormones are raging – which is one of the reasons I wondered if the story should be categorized for a younger reader.
If characterization is thin for the two protagonists, it’s two-dimensional for the supporting characters.
Factoring in that Sam and Avril are star-crossed lovers in a Shakespearean way, the plot unfolds like any other genre romance–which means no surprises. In this case, an unoriginal plot is not a liability, because understanding the narrative is difficult enough.
Though an historical info dump at the beginning is not the way to start a story, the lack of context is confusing. I imagine even young readers would be asking:
– How did the entire population of this country come under the control of Climate Cult when “Spain and France and Italy and the Netherlands – and probably further afield, their farmers have adapted successfully to global heating. They’ve adopted sustainable agricultural practices, maximised production and established food security policies.”?
– Why hasn’t the government adopted these same policies?
– A little further on, when Avril describes the raid on her valley, why didn’t the family inform the authorities rather than hide? Is there no law and order in this country?
– How can the valley stay hidden – an oasis in a desert, even as dirigibles are flying overhead?
– How come the entire country appears to be populated only by people of European (white) ancestry?
– Then, as the story unfolds, the reader finds out that ClimateCult is actually breaking the law, like this is some kind of epiphany. “So even if the contract did say we have to use their seeds and their seeds only, it wouldn’t stand up in court.” Did the residents just wake up and discover they have access to courts. This is incredulous – they’re living this way because they never read the small print?
– How come no one has a cellphone? The lack of any mention of digital technology is glaring – and unexplained.
After a lackluster beginning, the story slows even further with the middle chapters getting bogged down in the reconciliation between the two groups and the conveying of gardening information. Had the green knowledge been experimental or even innovative it may have proved interesting, but as it was, the information about composting and crop rotation has been practiced by most backyard gardeners everywhere, forever. Even if it had somehow been lost, it could easily be retrieved by anyone with access to the internet – like Sam’s mother “at the architects’ office where she worked in project planning” or his Dad at “the solar construction factory in the next town.”
The climax between the citizens and the ClimateCult security guards is the bridge too far in terms of incredulity.
One would imagine the way ClimateCult has kept the citizens in line would have included violence. After all, not everyone is compliant or complicit. To think three AgriCarriers accompanied by 50 truncheon wielding goons with orders “to remove the unauthorized soil and crops” would be deterred by two kids with their bikes across the road supersedes the suspension of disbelief. The guards wouldn’t have to kill Sam and Avril, just gently, albeit forcibly, move them out of the way (like cops do everywhere, all the time) – then destroy the gardens as ordered by their CEO. With the gardens destroyed and ClimateCult’s primacy reaffirmed, the company could let their corporate lawyers haggle with government officials over the legality of it, if the government is even inclined to – while business continued as usual. This type of fait accompli happens all the time, especially in authoritarian regimes and there is every indication Sam and Avril live in one.
These details don’t need to be revealed to middle aged or even young adult readers, though it is never a good idea to underestimate the intelligence of your audience, at the very least so as not to appear elitist. Narratives tend to flow smoother if they’re embedded in solid research. Besides, isn’t this one of the reasons we write, to find out how stuff works, how people think?
Even for dystopian fiction, Dirt has too many unexplained plot holes. It’s like the author created a flawed society to accommodate her green solutions. Solutions that, though widely used today, aren’t mitigating the existential threat of global warming. Why does she think they would in the future when the damage has become even more irreversible?
30
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.