"A social media celebrity, a wife and mother who sells her fantasy pioneer lifestyle of sourdough and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of followers, suddenly wakes up cold, dirty, and hungry in the year 1855 and must uncover the nature - hoax, reality show, test from God - of her terrifying new existence in this sensational debut novel. "My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive." Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie's followers - all 8 million of them - don't know won't hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They're sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn't simply living the good life, she's living the ideal - and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn't hers. Her home, her husband, her children - they're all familiar, but something's off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she's expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood”
"Mesmerizing... An ingenious, exquisite, be-careful-what-you-wish-for... In Burke's biting prose, Natalie is an electric antiheroine... Revelatory... Yesteryear draws to a dizzying conclusion."
-Michelle Ruiz, The New York Times Book Review
"One of the year's most relentlessly fast-paced and satisfying novels, a sharp and witty social satire that also works as a taut thriller and a vexing work of speculation... Unusually ambitious for a debut novel and also uncannily astute about the complicated, contradictory times in which we live."
--Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe
"The closest we'll get inside a tradwife's real and imperfect mind... Burke doesn't hold back... The humor is delightful... I laughed out loud... Burke's writing is honest and accessible. She's not trying to slander Natalie; she's trying to show us the unvarnished version. At the end of the day, that's the paradox of Yesteryear -- and one that makes it worth reading."
-Ginny Hogan, The Cut
"Bitingly funny and occasionally heartbreaking... Burke deftly paints a portrait of a woman whose sharp edges and supreme capability put her at odds with everyone in her life... More than a giddy, gory tale of a tradwife's comeuppance... Emotionally resonant."
-Aiden Arata, Los Angeles Times
"Bracing... There are more than a few satisfying twists that kept me reading late into the night... Juicy, vindictive and loads of fun."
-Maddie Oatman, Mother Jones