Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Publisher: Knopf Publishing
Publication Date: April 7, 2026
Format: Hardcover - 400 pages
Paperback - 592 pages
Audiobook - 13 Hours 47 Minutes
Kindle - 391 pages / 2.7 MB
Nook - 400 pages / 2 MB
ISBN (Hardcover): 978-0593804216
ISBN (Paperback): 979-8217287857
ASIN (Audiobook): B0FKTTYMVG
ASIN (Kindle): B0FH1V3D9M
BNID (Nook): 978-0593804223
Genre: Historical Fiction / Literary Fiction
Buy The Book:
Disclaimer: I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. I also purchased a hardcover edition of this book from my monthly Book Of The Month (BOTM) subscription.
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 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.
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.
My Book Review:
In Yesteryear, the debut novel by author Caro Claire Burke, the reader follows the life of Natalie Heller Mills, a successful tradwife influencer. Natalie wakes up one morning to find herself in the 1855 pioneer equivalent of her life. What ensues is a dark and intense portrayal of a woman's life that is anything but normal.
Natalie Heller Mills believes that she is a flawless Christian woman, who has a perfect life. She is married to Caleb, a man who she met in college and comes from a wealthy political family. Caleb's parents provide the money for Natalie and Caleb to purchase a farm in Idaho that they name the Yesteryear Ranch. Natalie has a disdain for the modern working women and believes that living the traditional pioneer lifestyle is the only way to live. She believes she was born to be a mother and has given birth to six children. She promotes her tradwife lifestyle on Instagram and becomes very successful with thousands of followers. But the only problem is that Natalie's life is all smoke and mirrors, and that online it is all about displaying a wholesome traditional lifestyle perception. That is until it all unravels ...
I really have a hard time figuring out what I want to say about this book. From the first page I had an instant dislike for Natalie, she is a narcissistic, arrogant, judgmental and condescending person. This brutal personality carried throughout the story, and I really was saying "WTF am I reading" throughout the whole story. Natalie's story alternates between the present and the 1855 past, but the constant between both timelines is how she is really detestable. What this story comes down to in my mind is how a person shows two sides of themselves: the one they portray in public, and the real person they are in the privacy of their home. It's all a smoke and mirror show, and oh yeah throw in that Natalie is just plain batshit crazy, and that's the story in a nutshell ... SMH.
While I applaud the author for writing and publishing her first novel, I respectfully did not like this story, and I wish her well as she publishes future novels.
Rating: 3 Stars 
About The Author
Caro Claire Burke received her Master's in Fine Arts from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the cohost of Diabolical Lies, a politics and culture podcast. Yesteryear is her first novel.
