Yesteryear is unlike anything I have ever read. Rarely has a protagonist been so immediately, spectacularly unlikeable. Natalie hooks you through her sheer vanity and inflated ego, then drags you by the hair through the calamity of her life.
For you, dear reader, in picking up Yesteryear, have become one of the "angry women." As you devour this tantalising read, you become engrossed in a cocktail of disbelief, outrage, and Schadenfreude.
Natalie Heller Mills is a "tradwife" influencer who preaches about the glory days of knit-your-own-yoghurt traditionalism to her online fanbase, made up of seething "bad" modern women and envious "good" Christian wives. She does so while surrounded by her gaggle of home-schooled children and her good ol’ cowboy husband, Caleb. They live on Yesteryear Ranch — a haven of home-baked bread, organic American farming, Christian domesticity, and … a mega media machine.
Behind the scenes, there are nannies, producers, and immigrant field workers keeping this titanic ship afloat, all hidden from public view. Yesteryear Ranch’s success is accredited exclusively to Natalie, Caleb, and their supposedly secure, godly marriage – secretly marred by disappointing sex, deep-seated loathing, and an affair that threatens to destroy everything.
The Nara-Smith-of-it-all comes to a screeching halt when Natalie is inexplicably transported to the Pioneer days she so idolised.
It is 1855.
"This is my home. This is not my home" — Natalie finds herself on a ramshackle farm set against the same Idaho hills as Yesteryear Ranch. In this world, Natalie has four children: Maeve, Mary, Abel, and Noah. They are so reminiscent of her own, and yet they are not hers. "Old Caleb" completes the uncanny scene — a burly version of Natalie’s husband who works the land, breeds her "like a barnyard animal," and hits her when she disobeys him.
The novel flips back and forth between these two realities: the modern illusion of traditionalism — filtered through hate comments, internet fame, and carefully curated images — and the harsh, bare-bones existence of true traditionalism, with all its scrubbing, kneading, and inescapable boredom.
But Natalie fails to reach anagnorisis. In fact, as the novel progresses, she becomes enveloped — oddly charmed, even — by her new life. While she initially questions whether this is the work of time travel or some hellishly elaborate reality TV stunt, she eventually comes to believe that it is by Divine design that she is destined to live in this "authentic" world.
But what of the fame? The hunger for attention? The desperate need for an audience? That is the one thing that leaves Natalie wanting: to be perceived. Because if there is one thing her audience of "angry women" loves to do, it’s watch her.
Yesteryear’s sharp, bitter first-person prose tears apart the fallacies of the American dream, traditional gender roles, political messaging, the Church, and our online personas. It encompasses all of this without ever losing the reader’s attention, and as much as you may want to, you cannot tear your eyes away from the car crash that is Natalie Heller Mills.
A blisteringly funny and unnervingly perceptive debut, Yesteryear cements Caro Claire Burke as a voice to watch. I, for one, cannot wait to see what she writes next.
Rebecca Nolten is a Modern and Medieval Languages graduate from the University of Cambridge (Girton College). She has worked across editorial, copywriting, translation, and arts publishing, with a particular focus on storytelling and visual culture. She is especially interested in translation, art history, and the ways in which stories move across languages, cultures, and media. Outside work, she enjoys illustration, reading, and visiting galleries and exhibitions.
