THE QUESTION OF free will is best approached sideways. Rather than asking head-on whether we have agency in our lives, we should ask ourselves a more consequential question: What happens when we deviate from the life script we’ve been handed, especially when that life script is dictated by religion?
This is the question that novelist and podcaster Caro Claire Burke explores in her debut novel, Yesteryear. The story follows the rise and fall of Natalie Heller Mills, a conservative trad wife social media influencer who suddenly finds herself transported to the 1800s. Homesteading—which had mostly been an act Natalie performed for Instagram, only possible thanks to a plethora of behind-the-scenes hired help—is suddenly overwhelmingly real, isolating, and cold.
Yesteryear is an exploration of womanhood in the U.S. under capitalism and religious fundamentalism. The novel was inspired by real-life Hannah Neeleman, a Mormon influencer who abandoned her dreams of being a ballerina to start a homestead, known as Ballerina Farm, with her husband. Ballerina Farm and the larger trad wife trend of returning to traditional gender roles were scrutinized in a July 2024 profile in The Times of London, which revealed that maybe Neeleman wasn’t as free or empowered as she seemed.
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