Caro Claire Bruke’s debut novel Yesteryear has the kind of brilliant premise that assures immediate buzz: a popular tradwife influencer, Natalie Heller Mills, known for creating content with her picture-perfect husband and gaggle of children wakes up confused and disoriented in 1855, forced to acclimate to the frontier lifestyle upon which she’s built her aesthetic. The concept of the tradwife entered the culture in the past couple of years: its a popular internet subculture of women who profess traditional gender roles—generating social content that focuses on their domestic duties, professing subservience to their husband, and committing to their role of child bearing. The choice to stay at home is framed as a distinct decision, a rejection of modern feminism. While not completely synonymous with Trump-era Republican politics, the phenomenon is closely aligned with the traditionalist values surrounding gender and the family that have become key tenets of the Republican platform.
This mindset perfectly describes Natalie, a young woman who grew up with a single mother in a Christian family in Idaho, who was taught that her purpose in life is to preserve appearances above all else. Natalie immediately struggles to display the kindness and sweet demeanor that her culture mandates for young women: her sharpness and exacting intellect separate her from the girls around her. She quickly learns that to preserve her image, she’ll need to soften all of her edges. While she professes her deep love of God and conceives of herself as a paragon of faith and female virtue, for Natalie faith is more of a performance than an internal compass. As she says: “Who is our Lord and Saviour, if not the original audience member for our lives?”
For many women in her generation, participating in higher education and securing a high-paying job is a rejection of the status quo—but for Natalie, its the opposite. When she arrives for her freshman year at Harvard she’s immediately disturbed by the values of her female classmates, whom she judges for chasing casual sex and careers in male dominated fields, and for Natalie the ultimate rebellion against their liberalism is to get married, get pregnant, and become a stay at home wife and mother dedicated to Christian family values. When she meets Caleb, a dim but pleasant classmate and son of an American political dynasty with prodigious wealth, she sees a chance to escape the unfriendly world of higher education and live out her dream of being a dutiful wife and mother. But reality quickly sets in when Natalie realizes that Caleb is not only dumb but completely devoid of ambition, and she’s forced to engineer a purpose for the both of them.
Lightning strikes when Natalie and Caleb, with Caleb’s father’s money, purchase a ranch in Idaho, close to where Natalie grew up. They build a “time machine”—a ranch designed to conceal modern appliances and amenities. Natalie feels aimless, raising her young children one after the other, while her husband becomes more and more sucked in by the conspiracy MAHA Manosphere YouTube universe—until her Instagram account goes viral one day. She’s eventually built enough of a following to hire farm laborers (who do the real labor while her husband plays cowboy), multiple nannies to raise her children, and a social content producer. Her operation is purposefully concealed from her followers, who see her cooking for her family, flirting with her husband, and doing it all on her own with a smile on her face. Her following consists of genuine fans, but also a group of people who she refers to as the “Angry Women”, who are liberal women that remind her of her college experience, putting negative comments on her posts, bemoaning her politics, etc.
As the careful facade constructed around her online presence begins to crumble around her due to a series of miscues—the chapters intersperse with Natalie’s life in 1855, as she struggles to escape her circumstances and understand how she became trapped in this time lapse. Caro Claire Burke carefully dissects the culture that produced Natalie, and some of the key ways that social media has transformed human morals and values. A fascinating and original debut with breathless narration, that comes to a thoughtful and well-plotted twist conclusion.