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 heir to a political dynasty? 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 ruthless 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.
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Exploring the modern fascination with curated online personas and traditional lifestyle subcultures, the satirical debut novel Yesteryear examines what happens when an Instagram tradwife is suddenly thrust into the harsh realities of authentic nineteenth-century domestic labor. Author Caro Claire Burke crafts a timely narrative following influencer Natalie Heller Mills as her polished, simulated past is replaced by an actual 1855 homestead without electricity or modern conveniences. The book offers a sharp, nuanced critique of social media aesthetics, digital burnout, and the performance of contemporary womanhood.
Caro Claire Burke earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Bennington Writing Seminars after devoting a decade to honing her craft as a writer and cultural critic. Prior to launching her fiction career, she worked as an editor at Katie Couric Media and contributed work to literary journals including the New Ohio Review. Alongside her literary endeavors, Burke co-hosts Diabolical Lies, a podcast focused on politics and contemporary culture. She lives in Central Virginia, where the surrounding history and rural environment helped shape her perspectives on technological dependence and historical nostalgia.
Burke's writing interrogates the tension between media-driven fantasy and historical reality, focusing on themes of agency, authenticity, and the labor underlying modern motherhood. In examining the cultural phenomenon of online tradwives, her prose goes behind the curtain of the influencer lifestyle to highlight the contradictions inherent in broadcasting anti-modern ideologies through modern digital platforms. Her work balances satirical social observation with empathetic character development, evaluating how social media platforms shape political discourse, personal identity, and traditional cultural narratives.
