Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

published 2026

 

 

In my recent piece for the i newspaper on a new Netflix series

Little House on the Prairie: Laura had me at the hat

I mentioned the concept of the tradwife – an online definition is as follows:

The tradwife movement is a social media-driven subculture where women embrace traditional gender roles, focusing on homemaking, child-rearing, and supporting their husbands, often sparking debate over feminism, gender equality, and political ideology.

 

Yesteryear is the current book of the tradwife, a novel looking at the whole idea in an unusual manner. It’s been a huge bestseller in the US, where it is set, and provoked endless discussions.

The chief character, Natalie, is a top influencer, with millions of followers checking into her Instagram account. She lives on a farm/ranch in Idaho, following a Christian and simple lifestyle, home-schooling her many children, making a ton of money.

We know straightaway that much of this is faked: Natalie has huge amounts of paid help, and a very shaky relationship with her husband Caleb, who is being a cowboy.

Next thing, she wakes up one morning and she is apparently stuck in pioneer times, 1855, living the life she has chosen to emulate. Naturally this is not good news at all: life is dirty, exhausting, difficult – and she doesn’t understand what she’s doing there. Is it time travel, a dream, a reality show, a message from God?

The novel proceeds with alternate sections telling the story of what led her to the ranch, and then the story of her trying to adapt to olden times, work out what is going on, find out what happened to her.

The book starts wonderfully well: it was funny, bitchy and thought-provoking. Natalie is a woman on the make, selfish and whole-hearted and clever – her view of the world is hilarious. There is absolutely no fake sisterhood in her story, she brings a cold eye to other women. Honestly, it made a change. (I’ve said before how much I like a Becky Sharp scenario). For example her judgement on her college roommate: ‘It was clear Reena was dreading not just the internship but the rest of her own life.’

She comes from a very Christian single-parent family, and makes it out of her community to Harvard. There she meets Caleb, who is part of a very wealthy political family, with a father with presidential ambitions. They marry, and have the first baby.

Natalie is increasingly uneasy about her husband’s lack of ambition….and he is an awful fellow, but still the author and Natalie have room to consider why he is like that. He hates gong to his parents’ house: ‘I could practically see Caleb wilting… he looked like a houseplant getting tortured with a hair dryer’.

The ranch is their way out, and the description of how Natalie starts her social media presence is very interesting. Her private thoughts behind her soulful smile are hilarious, and her attitude to her children is both shocking and kind of refreshing. She is an awful person, but her honesty and straightforwardness are still appealing. There is a lot of discussion of ‘likeability’ and ‘relatability’ in the context of social media world, just exactly as there is in the world of novels. Natalie is not relatable or likeable at all, looked at through most lenses, but I loved reading about her. (Pretty much none of the other characters pass the likeable test either.) Some readers have hated that aspect of her – the book is divisive.

In truth I had heard about this book, and was expecting something quite different: I thought it would be a slapstick time-travel book where this woman realizes the truth of a lifestyle she claimed to want, and learns her lesson. But that is a wildly over-simplistic view, and not what the book is about – and although very funny at times it was not the light-hearted laugh riot I was expecting.

The first third I found wholly compelling, and at times I was reminded of Curtis Sittenfeld (a huge compliment from me), though I thought it trailed off somewhat after that, and could have done with sharper editing. The ending, with some explanation of what has been going on, didn’t seem very well-worked out, I thought she needed to have another pass at it. Thinking about it afterwards there were endless objections and impossibilities. And there’s a rather trite comment from Natalie’s mother which seems to be trying to make an overarching point but is completely inadequate to the situation and to Natalie’s problems. (Though the mother is one of the few likeable characters in the book).

My #spoilernotspoiler system is going to come into play here: the book has an unlikely strand similar to one in this post. But don’t look if you don’t want to know… (it’s not given away in the post, but if you know the book well you would be able to guess something about Yesteryear).

There was also a strange echo of a recent long-running blog discussion on the trend between the wars for people to move to the country to try out eg chicken farming to try to make money Here with links and comments, and here with a relevant Punch cartoon. The SPOILER-not-really there is that it will never work, exactly as in Yesteryear.

As stated above, there are endless discussions online about what the book means, and who is to blame for what. Readers even look for clues in the listing for the book. (‘it is not categorized as X, so therefore….’) It certainly has provoked discussion about tradwives, fundamentalism, parenting, social media…

What about Little House on the Prairie? The Old Time-y sections did remind me of LHOTP, and actually showed the dark side of pioneer times – Burke does not hold back on, for example, just how horrible it is to wash everything by hand. I’m not sure there’s much else to say about any comparison: tradwife is an idea that modern women choose, while Carrie Ingalls had no real choices about her lifestyle, but did not become a tradwife by most standards.

My final verdict is that Yesteryear was very entertaining and thought-provoking, an astonishing debut, and wholly original. I can quite see why it has been snapped up for a major Hollywood film.

 

 

Where else to look for pictures than in the

Old Ralph Lauren Adverts: Archive

-       Mr Lauren famed and loved for his prairie looks

The picture of the settlers with wolf and ax/e does not directly reflect anything from the book, yet somehow seemed the one to choose. NYPL 1859

Deadly attack of a wolf upon a man, and heroic conduct of the man's wife - NYPL Digital Collections

Online discussions of LHOTP get very tied up with the role  of wolves in frontier life.