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story identification - Looking for young adult book about boy who wishes to be a farmer/gardener




I am looking for a young adult book, probably written in the late 60's to mid 70's, it was a dystopian future where people seemed to be set in for specific roles. The main character, a boy, wanted to be a farmer or gardener, while society was dictating he should be something else. There was something about a food shortage, or control of food, such that him being a farmer or gardener was somehow forbidden. I can't really recall more than that. Mostly the story was about how the boy learned secretly how to raise plants and with another (perhaps a girl) escaped the place he lived.


I know not much to go on, but it's one I recall liking when I was young but can't remember more of the story.



Answer



Sounds like it could be Frank Bonham's The Missing Person's League, first published in 1976:




  • In a dying, resource-starved world, food production is strictly controlled, and private food growing is prohibited





  • The protagonist and his father create a secret garden below their house (having stored the excavated soil in the walls) and have encounters with a investigating resource policeman.




  • He meets a girl who is the key to the larger plot (the mysterious disappearances of large numbers of people)




Eventually, we learn the reason for the disappearances, and they escape:



The disappeared people have actually been recruited to enter suspended animation in hidden bunkers; they will emerge after the ecosystem has re-established itself following a mass extinction




I enjoyed it as a youth, though I recall there are a couple of plot points that seemed hokey, particularly the



hypnotic mind-control of the girl and the ending with the bad guys meeting their end in an Indiana Jones-style facemelting booby-trap



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