YESTERYEAR by Carol Claire Burke

5 stars

In this brilliant, provocative, almost mythical debut: it’s trad wives versus career women, and sadly only the patriarchy seems to win. It’s also a great satire of MAGA culture and conservative media. Mostly, if you want to take a deeply intelligent look at today’s U.S. women- look no further than this book. Be prepared to be both highly entertained and want at times to throw the book against the wall in frustration at the male hierarchy in our society throws out against women.

Natalie Heller Mills grows up in the rural Idaho raised by a single Mom, who moves her girls to a new town and lies about being widowed instead of confessing to divorce. Natlie’s raised to be a devout traditional Christian, she’s also smart if friendless, and heads off to Harvard. But she drops out of college after marrying one of the sons of an ambitious, wealthy, U.S. Senator who espouses traditional Christian family values. Her husband turns out to be handsome, but unambitious and spineless, and Natalie turns herself into the ultimate trad wife influencer to provide them with a living and a cover story for her husband as a cowboy and farmer versus a ne’er do. Natalie does this with financial help as well as over-bearing threats from her father-in-law.

Natalie appears to her millions of social media followers as the ultimate trad-wife influencer: perfect and content on her picturesque Idaho farm named “Yesteryear” as she makes her strawberry jam, churns butter, and tends to her brood of chickens and brood of children. But she’s hidden out of sight all the modern appliances she relies on, her production assistant, her two nannies who she disparages, and her deep discontent with her husband. Natalie deals with it all with dismissiveness, coldness, and a lack of attention or love for her children. But Natalie’s scrappiness and snark also entertains, as she moves through ever more complicated hoops to keep up the façade of Perfect Natalie.

Natalie constantly compares herself to a specific college acquaintance who comes to embody all the Career Women, who Natalie views as sacrificing it all to climb the corporate ladder only to be stopped eventually in their tracks by men. She sees their long delay in having children and endless work hours as worthless sacrifices, only to realize all they’ve missed out on in their personal and family lives.

In a change of unclear time, Natalie finds herself truly a traditional wife, if a dysfunctional one, in a 19^th century hardscrabble life of the same Idaho farm, now hardscrabble and run down. She gets hit by her husband as she tries to escape and thinks she may have been kidnapped onto a reality TV show. Reading along, we’re confused as she is as to what’s going on.

The plot keeps you glued, and the no-win situation for women in our current society becomes clear as a bell.

Thanks to Penguin Random House, Knopf and Netgalley for an advance reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.