Although Among the Hidden does not have a specific setting, the story takes place in an America not too different and not too distant from our own. Throughout the course of the novel, the reader learns a lot about the society in which Luke and his family live. Sometime about ten years before the beginning of the novel, the country experienced a food shortage, and in order to control the population growth and preserve the food supply, the government passed laws forbidding parents from having more than two children. Luke's mother accidentally became pregnant after she had already had two children, and she decided to keep and hide her "third." This totalitarian government places other restrictions on its citizens, such as controlling what type of crops and livestock farmers may raise, forbidding junk food, confiscating farmland and woods for building houses, controlling the media, and forcing people to...