By Margaret S. Hamilton
“Tradwife is a term for a married woman who embraces
traditional gender roles and values and tends to share the details of her life
on social media.” (Britannica.com)
“The goal of the influencer is not to be loveable, and it
is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words:
addicting.” (Natalie)
In Burke’s satiric 2026 debut, Yesteryear, fictional
influencer Natalie Heller Mills provokes intense discussions among women of all
ages. Those of us who struggled to raise a family, care for elderly parents,
and maintain a career aren’t lured by an aura of cream cashmere-swathed country
living. We devoured magazines about Martha Stewart but created our own
lifestyles, by choice and economic necessity
Our daughters, who are closer in age to thirty-two-year-old
Natalie, might be entranced by the idea of living in Natalie’s remote Idaho
farmhouse (Fresh eggs and raw milk! Kids romping through a wildflower meadow!),
homeschooling their brood of gifted children and feeding them a wholesome diet
of grains and root vegetables. Natalie’s lifestyle is meticulously portrayed on
Instagram, with themed merchandise. You too can purchase organic cotton onesies
and cloth diapers, and swaddle baby in a hand-woven blanket! All, it turns out,
made in China.
Yesteryear is superbly written, though the
characters are more caricatures than believable people. Natalie is the mother
of six, probably suffering from postpartum depression. She is a narcissist:
selfish, self-important, with a lack of empathy for her husband, children, and
employees (two nannies and a social media content producer, plus the farmhands).
Natalie’s relationship with her children is transactional—how can they enhance
her Instagram image?
Natalie either time-travels or endures prolonged psychotic
episodes, transported to the same Idaho farm where she lives, but in 1855. [With
the exception of trading posts and a mission, Americans of European descent
didn’t settle in Idaho until 1860.] In her imagined past, Natalie suffers in
her unfamiliar environment—she’s cold, dirty, and unloved as she deals with the
reality of the nineteenth-century pioneer lifestyle she embraces during her
Instagram career. It’s an original twist on the tradwife trope, and Burke does
it well.
The book is a jumble of past and present, with Natalie’s
children and their nineteenth-century lookalikes, plus the additional children
she bears after her Instagram career implodes. Natalie damages everything she
touches: children, husband, employees, and farm animals. Ultimately, she pays
the price.
Natalie considers herself a spiritual person, but it’s the
automatic worship of a mumbled grace before dinner or morning prayers recited
by habit, not conviction.
The last third of the book is a chaotic chain of events,
past and present, and somewhat confusing.
Reviewers have labeled Yesteryear a thriller, black
comedy, social satire, or a coming of age book. I would add, in the immortal
words of the Rolling Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and then term
it women’s fiction.
Readers and writers, have you read about or encountered the
trad wife movement?
Margaret S. Hamilton is the author of forty short stories
and the first two books in the amateur sleuth Jericho Mysteries series.
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