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Cover of Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Satire · Free kit

Yesteryear

Caro Claire Burke

Tradwife influencer Natalie Heller Mills sells raw milk, sourdough, and a pioneer life on Idaho's Yesteryear Ranch — nannies, producers, and industrial ovens safely off-camera. Then she wakes in what seems to be 1855: no electricity, children she does not recognize, and a husband who is suddenly competent and cruel. Caro Claire Burke's debut is a satirical thriller about fame, faith, and the performance of womanhood, told in two timelines that refuse to let the feed stay pretty.

“My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.”

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Yesteryear Characters

Spoiler-aware but intrigue-first.

Natalie Heller Mills

The tradwife who treats being alive like a brand she can ace.

The Vibe
Natalie narrates like someone who has already won the argument with the entire internet. She is funny, mean, devout on camera, and privately exhausted by the children, the husband, and the labor she pretends is a sacrament. You keep waiting for her to blink. She practices smiling instead.
Their Contradiction
On the surface: A submissive Christian wife selling pioneer simplicity. Underneath: The breadwinner, the producer, the crisis manager — a woman who cannot bear to be ordinary and cannot admit she is in charge.
Why Readers Love / Hate Them
Readers will want to throw the book across the room and then pick it back up to see what she says next. That is the point.
Most Revealing Moment
Watch how she talks about Reena, Vanessa, and the Angry Women — the pleasure is never in being loved. It is in being hated correctly.
Book Club Hot Take
Is Natalie a victim of the script she was handed — or the most successful author of it?

Caleb Mills

The political-dynasty youngest son who cannot farm, cannot leave, and still gets a plot twist of his own.

The Vibe
Caleb arrives as furniture with a last name: unambitious, conspiracy-curious, handsome in a way that photographs as "cowboy." He is supposed to be the homestead. He is actually the cabinet corner Natalie's mother warned about. Then the 1855 timeline hands you a harder, older version of him, and the contrast is the whole marriage.
Their Contradiction
On the surface: Soft-handed heir playing rancher. Underneath: A man who will follow whichever story — campaign, affair, or pioneer cosplay — lets him stop being asked to be competent.
Why Readers Love / Hate Them
Easy to dismiss as comic relief until you notice how much of Natalie's empire depends on him staying useless on purpose.
Most Revealing Moment
Watch what he does after Shannon, and watch who he becomes when the ranch no longer has to look like an Instagram grid.
Book Club Hot Take
Is Caleb trapped by Natalie — or is he the one who finally gets the life he wanted once nobody is watching?

Shannon

The Barnard dropout hired to make the lie look handmade.

The Vibe
Shannon is nineteen when she lands at Yesteryear, supposedly there to manage the channels. She is good at the job, which is the problem: she can see the nannies, the pesticides, the drop-shipped Dutch ovens. Natalie is begrudgingly impressed and already waiting for the betrayal.
Their Contradiction
On the surface: The millennial producer who makes the homestead cinematic. Underneath: The only employee willing to say the ranch is a business, not a family — and then to say it on television.
Why Readers Love / Hate Them
Some readers will cheer her as the first person to puncture the brand. Others will argue she was happy to cash the checks until the affair made staying impossible.
Most Revealing Moment
Watch her face when she realizes how much help it takes to look like you do it all yourself.
Book Club Hot Take
Does Shannon expose Yesteryear because it is right — or because Natalie made her a character in a story she refused to stay inside?

Clementine Mills

The eldest daughter who was never going to remain a prop.

The Vibe
Twelve at the start, already asking the questions Natalie does not want on the record. Natalie cannot bond with her, cannot stop seeing a clone walking closer, and still uses her as proof that she is a mother. Clementine is the book's quiet countdown.
Their Contradiction
On the surface: The child who "made" Natalie a mother. Underneath: The person who understands the ranch better than the woman running it, and who will not stay to be footage.
Why Readers Love / Hate Them
Protective on sight — and then fiercely divided over how far a child owes a parent who made her famous without asking.
Most Revealing Moment
Watch what she does with information. Clementine does not just notice the gap between the feed and the house. She keeps it.
Book Club Hot Take
When Clementine finally acts, is she saving her siblings — or completing the rejection Natalie felt in the hospital and never forgave?

Mary

The 1855 eldest who runs the house and treats Natalie like a chore.

The Vibe
Sixteen, malnourished if you look closely, and already the adult in the room. Mary sends Maeve for firewood, orders Natalie out of bed, and knows the ranch's rules better than the woman who thinks she owns it. She looks like Natalie. She is not interested in Natalie's theories.
Their Contradiction
On the surface: A severe pioneer daughter, almost cruel in her competence. Underneath: A child who was told the outside world would kill her, and who kept everyone alive anyway.
Why Readers Love / Hate Them
Easy to dislike in the middle of the book — Mary will not play along with the time-travel panic — and much harder to judge once you know what she was managing.
Most Revealing Moment
Watch who she protects when Natalie wants to leave: the younger children first, always, including the mother who cannot parent them.
Book Club Hot Take
Is Mary Natalie's masterpiece or Natalie's indictment — the daughter who actually learned the pioneer script?

Reena Magliotti

The Harvard roommate Natalie cannot stop hate-watching.

The Vibe
Reena lasts one messy freshman year in Natalie's life and then lives rent-free in her head for decades. Natalie invents Reena's failures in high resolution: consulting, layoffs, lip liner, the whole "modern woman" costume. Reena, meanwhile, becomes a journalist and shows up when it costs something.
Their Contradiction
On the surface: The secular foil Natalie needs in order to feel holy. Underneath: The only person Natalie will speak to when the audience is gone — which means the rivalry was intimacy all along.
Why Readers Love / Hate Them
You may root for Reena simply because Natalie is so sure she is winning. Then the interview happens, and the power in the room is not where Natalie thinks it is.
Most Revealing Moment
Watch who is doing whom a favor when Reena sits down with a prologue in her bag.
Book Club Hot Take
Did Natalie build an entire personality in opposition to Reena — and if so, who actually had the more expensive life?

Doug Mills

The war-veteran patriarch who will borrow a ranch for a campaign and return it damaged.

The Vibe
Four decades in office, hungry for the presidency, happy to let Natalie's content and Caleb's forums season the rhetoric. Doug is the money that bought the farm and the machine that decides when Shannon is a problem versus a liability.
Their Contradiction
On the surface: Family patriarch and political icon. Underneath: A man whose loyalty lasts exactly as long as a poll, and whose "help" always has a press strategy attached.
Why Readers Love / Hate Them
Readers who came for the tradwife satire may underestimate him. He is the reason the ranch exists — and the reason it is allowed to fail in public.
Most Revealing Moment
Watch the moment Shannon's story stops being containable. Doug does not have a moral crisis. He has a calendar.
Book Club Hot Take
Is Yesteryear Ranch Natalie's creation, or Doug's unused youngest son converted into content?

Maeve

The 1855 youngest, and the only person Natalie almost lets herself love on that timeline.

The Vibe
Sweet-tempered, fetch-the-firewood, willing to sit with a feverish woman who keeps saying she wants to go home. Natalie tries to make her an ally against Mary. Maeve is a child. She still tells the truth about chickens.
Their Contradiction
On the surface: The soft one, the proof that 1855 is not only cruelty. Underneath: Another kid raised inside a game she did not know was a game, whose sickness becomes Natalie's deadline to run.
Why Readers Love / Hate Them
The character most likely to make a hardened reader go quiet — because Maeve did not pick the aesthetic.
Most Revealing Moment
Watch how Natalie uses Maeve's illness as permission to leave. Care and escape share a sentence.
Book Club Hot Take
If Maeve is the only 1855 child Natalie feels close to, what does that say about the kind of daughter she can stand?

Character Dynamics Map

The engine is Natalie versus everyone she needs in order to look holy: Caleb, who photographs as a husband and functions as a prop; Shannon, hired to make the prop cinematic and then unwilling to stay off the record; and Clementine, the daughter who looks like a clone walking closer. The 1855 house restages the same family with the volume up — Mary already running the homestead, Old Caleb no longer bothering to be charming, Maeve as the one soft landing — so the club can argue whether those people are strangers or the same marriage without an audience. Reena and Doug sit outside the ranch and still own pieces of it: Doug because he paid for the land and the cover-up, Reena because Natalie cannot stop competing with a roommate from freshman year. The question underneath all of it is not who is likable. It is who gets to leave, and who was never told they were allowed to.

Superlatives

Award categories built to spark arguments (in a good way).

  • Most Likely to Practice Smiling Until It Becomes a Medical Condition

    Winner: Natalie Heller Mills

    Early followers tell her the smile looks strained, so she wears it as a uniform — even on occasions that call for a straight face.

    Close second: Caleb Mills

    Do you agree, or is Caleb's campaign-ready blankness a more committed performance?

  • Most Likely to Call You an "Angry Woman" and Mean It as a Compliment to Herself

    Winner: Natalie Heller Mills

    She is sure progressive women are addicted to hating her, and she tends that hate like a crop.

    Close second: Doug Mills

    Is Doug harvesting the same audience, just with better polling?

  • Most Likely to Name Every Cow Sassafras and Still Not Know How to Keep One Alive

    Winner: Caleb Mills

    Every cow on the place gets the same name, which is a cute homestead bit until you realize how many Sassafrases the family has gone through.

    Close second: Natalie Heller Mills

    Is the naming a Caleb joke, or Natalie's brand leaking onto livestock?

  • Most Likely to Turn a Zoom Influencer Course into a Personality

    Winner: Natalie Heller Mills

    Tammy Lane's social-media class is supposed to be a skill. Natalie treats it like ordination.

    Close second: Shannon

    Does Shannon actually know the platform better — and is that why Natalie resents her?

  • Most Likely to Keep a Hate-Follow Alive for Twenty Years

    Winner: Natalie Heller Mills

    She tracks Reena like a rival sports team: consulting gigs, layoffs, lip liner, the whole invented misery.

    Close second: Reena Magliotti

    When Reena shows up with a recorder, is that journalism — or the other half of the same obsession?

  • Most Likely to Be Hired to Film a Homestead and Accidentally Clock That It Is a Set

    Winner: Shannon

    She is surprised, on arrival, by the nannies and the help. That surprise is the whole exposé in miniature.

    Close second: Louise Crenshaw

    Louise double-checks the homeschooling with Natalie. Is she more complicit because she stayed?

  • Most Likely to Mother Her Own Mother

    Winner: Mary

    She orders Natalie out of bed, hides the tonic, runs the younger kids, and still looks like the woman she is parenting.

    Close second: Clementine Mills

    Clementine does it from the outside with a warrant. Mary does it from the kitchen. Who had the harder job?

  • Most Likely to Use a Child as Both Content and Alibi

    Winner: Natalie Heller Mills

    The kids prove the lifestyle, fill the grid, and — when Clementine talks — become the evidence that undoes her.

    Close second: Caleb Mills

    Caleb homeschools and later keeps the 1855 story going. Is he equally on the hook?

  • Most Likely to Borrow Someone Else's Ranch for a Speech and Leave the Dishes

    Winner: Doug Mills

    Natalie's rhetoric and Caleb's forums season a presidential bid until Shannon is no longer containable, at which point Doug's help expires.

    Close second: Caleb Mills

    When Caleb announces he will run for office, is that ambition or Doug's leash?

  • Most Likely to Find a Microphone in the Dirt and Still Call It a Test from God

    Winner: Natalie Heller Mills

    The broken mic should end the pioneer fantasy. She pockets it and keeps theorizing: reality show, kidnapping, Satan, the Lord.

    Close second: Mary

    Mary already knows the rules of the house. Is she protecting Natalie from the truth, or protecting the kids from Natalie?

  • Most Likely to Leave Home at Sixteen and Take the Siblings With Her

    Winner: Clementine Mills

    She walks Samuel, Stetson, Jessa, and Junebug out first, then comes back years later with paperwork for the rest.

    Close second: Abigail

    Natalie's sister leaves a marriage and looks joyful. Is that the road Natalie could never stand to watch?

  • Most Likely to Crush Pills into a Tonic and Call It Care

    Winner: Caleb Mills

    He tells Clementine that Natalie has good days and bad days. The tonic is how the 1855 set stays standing.

    Close second: Amelia Mills

    Caleb's mother offered Natalie pills when motherhood went badly. Is this the family trade, or Caleb's own invention?

  • Most Likely to Write the Book Her Mother Will Have to Hear in Prison

    Winner: Mary

    The Book of Mary is dedicated to Natalie. Reena reads the prologue aloud. It is love, inventory, and a door that does not open backward.

    Close second: Reena Magliotti

    Is the memoir Mary's voice, or Reena's last move in a freshman-year fight?

  • Most Likely to Be Called Mama by a Stranger in a Trailer Marked MANOSPHERE

    Winner: Natalie Heller Mills

    The escape toward medicine for Maeve dumps her into the present with instant noodles, a screen, and a man who already knows her title.

    Close second: Clementine Mills

    Clementine is the one who actually comes out of the trees like an angel with a warrant. Who ends the 1855 story?

  • Villain-Coded: Most Likely to Keep a Family in a Game They Did Not Know Was a Game

    Winner: Natalie Heller Mills

    Mary is told it is a game, then it is just the house. Abel gets the woods; the others get the lie. That is not a vibe. It is a sentence.

    Close second: Caleb Mills

    Caleb says he had no choice. Natalie notes he got to do nothing. Whose ranch is the cage?