Item: Yesteryear
Rating: 4
Author: Catherine

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Published by Knopf
Publication date: April 7, 2026
Genres: Book Clubs, Debut, Fiction, Cultural, Social Issues

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Natalie is a God-fearing women living a righteous life on a massive cattle ranch in Idaho. She is a loving wife and mother to five happy, healthy children with a sixth on the way. That she monetizes her life and that it might not be as “real” as she portrays it is the crux of Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel, Yesteryear. Especially when Natalie wakes one morning to find herself in the 1800s homestead lifestyle she’s been pedaling for years. Gone are the nannies, the appliances, the farm workers, and even the indoor plumbing.

I’ve never read fiction that had me so completely set against the main character by the second paragraph. Natalie is pumping out arrogant superiority like radiation from Chernobyl. And it’s just as toxic. She and her wealthy husband attempt a back-to-the-land lifestyle funded by his father, but when the money dries up and his incompetence becomes clear, Natalie turns to social media to support the family. After reinventing herself to attract followers and sponsors, she unexpectedly becomes a manosphere icon when a fundamentalist prepper promotes her on his podcast. Espousing the tradwife life brings her the money and power she’s always wanted.

What kind of hellish joke is it then when she finds herself back in the 1850s, the time period her online life mimics? Her mind is forced into the sort of mental gymnastics that can break a person. This is her husband, her children, and her house, but this is most certainly not her life. Burke bends and folds Natalie throughout Yesteryear as she grapples with what has happened to her in ways that keep the reader almost as contorted as Natalie herself. Has she time traveled? Has she been kidnapped? Is this a test from God? That question colors the pages of Yesteryear as chapters flip between Natalie’s backstory in the modern-day world and the hell of living in a shack with sullen children and a tyrannical husband who now controls her.

There is so much to unpack after traveling through Yesteryear. This is a novel written to throw gasoline on a subject smoldering in the American zeitgeist and Burke doesn’t have time for nuance. The men are caricatures, the personification of those who feel emasculated by strong women and believe the only way to right things is to force women back into submission. As the sole representative for the women Natalie is an unreliable narrator who garners no sympathy or even understanding. Her willful denial of facts and science results in devastating consequences on her own children.

Does Burke go to extremes to make her point? Absolutely. Even as a reader who agreed with 95% of what was being said there are moments and situations that feel unnecessarily heavy-handed. The point has been made, the prosecution rests, but Burke doesn’t slow her momentum in torching far right-wing beliefs about women. There’s no pretense at this being an evenhanded story. She comes in hot against the burgeoning #tradwife lifestyle that the religious right is pushing as the only way to live. But maybe that’s the point. There is no middle ground with this movement. As women’s rights and advancements are slowly clawed back and the traditional wife and patriarchal tenets of woman as child-bearer and homemaker regain prominence in America she’s not pulling any punches. She makes Yesteryear an outlandish novel particularly well-suited for the times we’re currently living in.

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