Today’s review is about YESTERYEAR by Caro Claire Burke. This is a satire of tradwife culture. The premise is the main character wakes up and finds herself in 1855 Idaho instead of present day.
Author: Caro Claire Burke
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Publisher: Knopf
Publish Date: April 07, 2026
Print Length: 400
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Yesteryear Synopsis
Synopsis
A traditional American woman, a “tradwife” influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855—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.
“A bold and biting satire, Yesteryear…will have you cackling and gasping right to the final page.”
—Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid series
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 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.
Yesteryear Book Review
Since YESTERYEAR is such a popular book, this review of mine is more casual. The official synopsis (above) is pretty spot on, so I don’t recap it here. Instead, let me jump right into what I thought about this hot topic book of the summer.
I thought this satire of “tradwife” life was better written than I expected it to be. Earlier this year I read TRAD WIFE by Saratoga Schaefer, which is a popcorn horror novel about tradwife life in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby. That book had a rather superficial approach to commentary on tradwife culture. While YESTERYEAR isn’t exactly an academic paper, it has a more clever way of commenting on tradwife-dom. Burke does this, of course, with the premise that throws Natalie, the main character, back in time to 1855 Idaho to experience what it was really like to live daily life the old fashioned way. But she also sets everything up such that the reader might wonder if Natalie is actually unlikeable or appears unlikeable because of various circumstances. Chalk this up to nurture, if you will.
There’s a lot to comment on here, but it’s kind of hard to fully do so without spoilers. First, Natalie grew up in a religious family. She absorbed those sensibilities, which include no divorce, no sex before marriage, have babies, etc. Yet, interestingly, she decides to go to an east coast Ivy League away from her home in Idaho. It doesn’t appear that her intention is to find a husband there, but she does anyway. How that all unfolds is a commentary, at least partly, on how it’s important to spend time getting to know your partner rather than rush into a marriage.
Natalie quickly finds out that her husband, Caleb, is the black sheep in a political family. His family have more than enough ambition to make up for his lack of drive. The book is from Natalie’s POV the entire time, so to the reader Caleb does seem to have a failure to launch. I could sympathize with that for Natalie, particularly after they start having kids. That whole part of the story screams loudly how, while men may be the head of the family, it’s women who often pick up a lot or most of the slack. There is a moment where Natalie muses that it seems as if they each want to have a gender role that is opposite of what a trad life preaches.
There’s also commentary about how liberal women always seem angry and unhappy. Natalie sees this in the comments of her social media posts and also during her short time at Harvard. She uses these experiences to justify to herself why traditional gender roles are better. The social media topic of YESTERYEAR also brings up 1) whether what an influencer presents is the truth, 2) how those in parasocial relationships with the influencer feel betrayed if they learn about something that doesn’t fit into their expectations, 3) if an influencer is lying when they don’t show the full picture, and 4) if children should be used in posts to sell some lifestyle brand.
There’s plenty to talk about with YESTERYEAR, but the rest is all spoilers. The stakes got pretty high in the last 150 pages or so and I binge read them in one sitting. The more I think about the ending, the more I like it. It wasn’t what I expected at all, so I’m glad I was surprised. However, that doesn’t mean I like what happened, just that the ending was satisfying, in a way.
That said, I open this up to any discussion in the comments. So read them at your own risk because they might contain spoilers!
Rating: 4
Content warnings: sexual content, sexism, child abuse
Reading format: Hardback
