Yesteryear

by Caro Claire Burke ★★★★★

Natalie Heller Mills is winning at life. She's 32, living on a picturesque Idaho homestead ("Yesteryear Ranch"), a mother of five with her sixth on the way. She has an audience of millions on Instagram, a following she has cultivated through carefully honed imagery of her bucolic rural life. "Sometimes it actually made me sick, how perfect my life was, and how good I was at living it."

Natalie is also, as she puts it, a "flawless Christian woman." She was raised by a single mother, who imbued strong Christian values as well as imprinted the fear of God in her daughter. While other children had fun, Natalie hunkered down with her books and her studies and her own indefatigable personal drive. "I was born with spades of discipline, I'm practically overflowing with it—which is why, I think, I've never had much trouble with anything in my life. Not motherhood, nor marriage, nor serving Him. All of it appeared to me as a series of tasks to be accomplished each day, at the right time, in the correct chronological order. I know it's not that easy for other people, but it really is for me."

Except, not everything is as Natalie would like us to believe. Her carefully cultivated online persona, as well as the mask she paints for most interactions in her life, hides the reality that the things she mentioned—motherhood, marriage, faith—are all things she struggles with daily, not to mention her difficulty keeping a bevy of thoughts that are decidedly un-Christian at bay. Despite those struggles, Natalie emerges as a bit of a badass. She's self-made, and through force-of-will, has managed to bend her life into a shape that has created success for herself and her family, even if the veneer people see is mostly inauthentic. You may not agree with many of her beliefs, but you have to respect her grit what she has accomplished.

From the confident, idyllic opening pages of the book, we begin to see the cracks in Natalie's cultivated front. Her unshakeable narration is interrupted with small jabs of reality. Pointed questions about her content leave her flustered, and a disgruntled employee suggests things might not be quite so perfect. When we learn that that her good Christian husband is likely having an affair, we begin to see the reality of her existence, and that many of the things she worked so tirelessly to mold to perfection are starting to fall apart.

And then something bizarre happens: Natalie wakes up in 1805.

She's in her house, but it's not quite her house. Her husband looks an awful lot like her actual husband, Caleb, except older and more haggard and just different. "He's Caleb, and then he's a distant relative of Caleb's, and then he's a stranger, an older man, staring at me in the dead of night." Her four children—an eldest girl, two sons, and a young daughter—all look like they could be her own children, but are distinctly not her children from the present. Even her house is nearly the same, but rundown, and without electricity or running water or any of the modern amenities. It's like she's trapped in a bizarre fever dream, but as the days pile upon each other, it seems clear that she is not waking up any time soon. Things start to take on a decidedly Westworld feel.

As Natalie tries to figure out what in the world has happened to transport her to 1805, her time in the past is interspersed with chronological flashbacks of her "present" life. Those begin with her time as a student at Harvard where she met Caleb, the youngest son in a prominent political family; they continue with their courtship, marriage, and launch into life; and they eventually fill in the gaps on how they came to establish Yesteryear Ranch. Through the flashbacks we are treated to the truth behind the veneer, and through Natalie's time in 1805 we see an authentic Natalie when the mask is fully removed and replaced with the terror of how she is going to survive her predicament. For a woman so used to controlling all aspects of her life, she is now completely at the mercy of her situation for the first time in as long as she can remember.

It's a captivating story. For starters, it's a main character and narrator with a point of view rarely seen in literature these days. Natalie is an ultraconservative "tradwife", but she's presented in such a way that I think readers of all political persuasions will find components of the novel to latch onto. Conservatives will nod in agreement with Natalie's caustic takes on the godless state of society and the "Angry Women" (always capitalized) that inflame her social feed with their hate. Liberals will despise much of what she says, but then revel in Natalie's comeuppance, happy to see her professed superiority cut down in 1805 and beyond. I'm sure, at the same time, the book may enrage some from both sides, which is inevitable when you tackle as many issues as starkly as author Caro Claire Burke does in this debut novel.

I found the entirety of it fascinating. There are plenty of "wait...did she just say that?" moments, and I laughed out loud several times. Burke's ability to juxtapose Natalie's inner monologue with her distinctly different outward actions helped unlock the true essence of the character. There is an underlying mystery—how did Natalie end up in 1805, and what could unlock her return? While we're trying to figure that out, there are tiny moments that make Natalie think that maybe this is some sort of warped modern reality TV show, her own version of The Truman Show. Maybe she isn't actually in 1805? But when things cross lines no reality show ever would, she turns her attention to trying to find a way back to the future.

Readers will be invested one way or another, either rooting for Natalie to overcome her situation, or cheering for her to get what's coming to her. The novel is already getting a ton of buzz, and rightly so. It's thought-provoking, entertaining, and will likely be a book club stalwart in 2026. It lived up to the hype for me, and it's one that I expect will be a part of the zeitgeist this year. Preorder or reserve it now so you can get be in the know! It's well worth reading.

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Book Details

• Title: Yesteryear

• Author: Caro Claire Burke

• Publisher: Knopf

• Publication Date: April 7, 2026

• Format: Ebook

• ISBN-13: 978-0593804223

• Pages: 400