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Book: “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke
Publishing Info: Knopf, April 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.
My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.
Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.
Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.
A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!
I remember when the announcement for the book “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke hit the publishing news, and the very concept completely had me hook line and sinker. A tradwife homesteader influencer being possibly transported to the early 1800s (aka a time where women had no power or choices in their lives) that she has always claimed to want to experience? And tries to sell it as something that all women SHOULD want to experience? Only to find it to be ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE?
So yes, I had pretty high hopes for “Yesteryear”. And “Yesteryear” blew them out of the water.
“Yesteryear” keeps a lot of its secrets hidden away, slowly unveiling them through a couple of unfolding narratives. We start on a typical day on Yesteryear Ranch, with tradwife influencer Natalie Heller Mills going through the motions of content creation for her millions of followers. She presents a front of traditional Christian values, rustic and ‘natural’ living, and a perfect family of multiple children, a perfect husband, and a ranch she runs herself (no one has to see the multiple nannies, the fact husband Caleb is an aimless dolt, or the fact they have MULTIPLE hired hands). You get the sense that something on this day is off, with tension building between Natalie, Caleb, and one of her producers. Then, Natalie awakens to find herself in a dank ranchhouse that looks like Yesteryear but is far more dilapidated, with children that aren’t the children she knows, and a husband who seems like Caleb but is violent and controlling. Not to mention it seems like she has really been transported back in time to the early 1800s, a time she claims to long for where women were submissive to their husbands and eager to fulfill their gendered duties, but is in actuality a nightmare. So the narratives become going to the past to see Natalie’s journey from devout Christian gal to the mogul of an empire that seems to be on the brink, and then the new reality that has her feeling trapped and desperate to escape. I loved the framing of this as they slowly start to converge, and the building tension and questions about what the HELL has happened to Natalie to get from Ballerina Farms-esque wealth and status to actual tradwife hell. It kept me guessing the whole time, presenting not only nightmare scenarios of Natalie’s new normal and her seeking out of answers, but also a clear villain story of how she got to her dream and the people she stepped on to get there. All will be revealed, and done so nearly perfectly, but the slow burn of it all crackles and kept me so hooked I read this in two days.
But the heart of this story (even if it’s a bit of a rancid one, and I mean that in a good way) is Natalie and her trad wife influencer ambitions and how far she will go to achieve them. In other trad wife books I’ve read in the past year, we have protagonists who are definitely complex and are seeking out fame and status with this highly damaging platform and influence, but ultimately they have learning moments and kind of see the error of their ways, or came to their positions through means that are ultimately empathetic and give them some grace. This isn’t a bad thing, really, and I did enjoy the ability to give them grace with the context that we get as the tale goes on. But Natalie? Natalie is also a well rounded character who doesn’t feel like a moustache twirling villain, but she is smug, she is a hypocrite, she is judgmental and cruel, and she is a sly and subtle monster who knows how to hide behind a veneer of piety in order to achieve her goals. Sure there is a Ballerina Farms vibe to her, but there is also a very clear undercurrent of Ruby Franke in her cruelty and her thirst for power at any cost. I was thrilled to see Burke take her places that others haven’t, like the fact that she is more than willing to cozy up with white supremacists and spew bigoted talking points (but in a gentle way) if she can feel superior to everyone else, especially the ‘angry women’ who she feels incredibly victimized by even though she’s hardly a victim. She’s just venomous, and it felt like it was epitomizing the darkest realities of the trad wife movement and its ties to Christo-fascism and white supremacy, and how it gets enmeshed with far right political movements. It’s the harshest critique of the movement I’ve seen and it is spectacular, even if it is deeply, DEEPLY uncomfortable.
“Yesteryear” is phenomenal. It kept me guessing, kept me engaged, and is sure to be a favorite read of the year for me. I’m blown away.
Rating 10: Mind blowing. A fantastic critique of the performance of conservative (to far right) femininity that trad wife content bolsters that is rife with suspense and building dread.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Yesteryear” is included on the Goodreads list “Tradwife Thrillers”.
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