What To Read If You Loved (or Are Waiting For) ‘Yesteryear’
Between “The Calamity Club,” “Theo of Golden,” and “Whistler,” this past year has brought us a lot of popular titles — but the buzziest of them all might just be “Yesteryear,” the debut novel from Caro Claire Burke.
Hooking readers with an irresistible, Twilight-Zone-esque premise, the book centers on a modern “tradwife” named Natalie who, after building a massive following online depicting her rustic pioneer lifestyle as a conservative Christian mother, wakes up one day to find herself in the filthy, frightening, and brutal reality of 1855. Transported from a curated world of cameras and influencers to a functioning farm with new responsibilities and even new children calling her “Mom,” Natalie must figure out what’s going on and how she can get back home.
“Yesteryear” has captivated readers with its satirical exploration of power and modern womanhood, its sharp understanding of influencer culture, and its perplexing main character that one reviewer referred to as a “car wreck of a protagonist whom readers won’t be able to look away from, even as she crashes through barriers and leaves bodies in her wake.” Because of the high demand, it can be difficult to get your hands on a copy, either at the library or on Libby. So, if you’re currently stuck in line — or if you’ve already read it and can’t wait to sink your teeth into something similar — here are some titles to try out while you wait!
Educated by Tara Westover
Although it’s a true story featuring no time travel, Tara Westover’s memoir “Educated” traverses a lot of the same ground as “Yesteryear” — faith, family, isolation, and home-schooling beneath the big skies of the Mountain West. Westover was raised by a Mormon survivalist family that kept her out of traditional schools, an upbringing she defied by seeking out a formal education herself and eventually attending Cambridge University to earn a Ph.D. One of the most celebrated memoirs in recent years (not to mention its unforgettable cover design), “Educated” traces Westover’s lifelong journey of learning.
For a similar memoir about discovering one’s own road out, check out Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle.”
Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novak
Similarly incisive about social media and the personas we curate online, “Murder Bimbo” unfolds in three acts. Our narrator is a sex worker who has just assassinated a right-wing politician named Meat Neck and decamped to a remote cabin. There, she pulls out her laptop and tells her story, first to a true-crime podcast host, then to the ex-girlfriend she’s trying to win back, and finally directly to the reader. As details and motivations vary across each version, the reader is left to decipher what really went down. “Murder Bimbo” was pitched as “‘Gone Girl’ for the Luigi Mangione era,” and this essential 21st-century novel delivers on that promise.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
The titular ministry in Kaliane Bradley’s science fiction love story is gathering “expats” from across history to help determine the feasibility of time travel. A present-day civil servant is assigned to live as a “bridge” with one of these expats, Commander Graham Gore, who had died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic. Although Gore is initially disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who bares her calves and listens to something called “Spotify,” the unlikely roommates eventually develop a deeper relationship. Featuring a historical figure adrift in our modern world, “The Ministry of Time” is conceptually “Yesteryear” in reverse.
The Grace Year by Kim Leggett
In the world of Kim Legget’s young-adult dystopian horror, all girls are banished into the wilderness for an entire year once they turn 16. Told that their skin releases a powerful aphrodisiac at this age that can lure grown men from their beds and drive other women mad with jealousy, the girls are meant to spend their year of survival releasing their magic into the wild so they can return home “purified” and ready to marry. Though it leans into more familiar YA tropes, “The Grace Year” shares “Yesteryear’s” concerns with power, gender, and the ways in which patriarchal systems are upheld.
Paper Cut by Rachel Taff
Another thriller built on the tension between private selves and public personas, “Paper Cut” focuses on Lucy Golden, a survivor infamous in the true-crime community for the murder she committed while escaping a California cult twenty years ago. When online trolls start asking increasingly threatening questions about the crime, questions that could tear her life apart, Lucy decides to team up with a documentarian eager to make her his next subject. This gives her a chance to reclaim the narrative, but it also means returning to that California desert, coming face-to-face with her torrid past, and potentially unearthing some long-buried secrets.
The Guest by Emma Cline
Invoking the hazy summer odyssey of John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer,” Emma Cline’s “The Guest” shifts the tale from suburbia to East Long Island, where the older man Alex had been staying with has just cut her loose following an embarrassing misstep at a dinner party. Instead of returning to the city, Alex drifts through the hedged lanes, gated mansions, and luxurious guest houses of the Hamptons for a week, existing almost liminally in a world where nobody questions the presence of a young pretty girl. The setting couldn’t be much different, but fans of “Yesteryear” will likely appreciate “The Guest’s” exploration of social mores and its protagonist’s mutable sense of morality.
You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto
As “Yesteryear” takes on tradwife culture, Jesse Q. Sutanto’s “You Will Never Be Me” sets its sights on “mom-fluencers.” The story focuses on two of these parental personalities, Meredith Lee (“Merry Meredith”) and Aspen Palmer (“All-Day Aspen”). Although Meredith built her following first, it’s Aspen’s account that truly takes off. But when Meredith impulsively steals one of Aspen’s children’s iPads and gains access to all her accounts and calendars, she can’t resist the urge to tweak Aspen’s pristine online presence — an urge that grows more sinister as the story escalates. With Meredith seemingly MIA and with her own world up-ended, Aspen must work overtime to continue projecting a picture-perfect lifestyle to her followers.
Heartwood by Amity Gaige
New Englanders might feel a little homesick amid the dusty plains of “Yesteryear,” but “Heartwood” locates a more forested — though less fantastical — mystery within the deep wilderness of central Maine. When 42-year-old experienced hiker Valerie Gillis goes missing off the Appalachian Trail, she starts writing frantic letters to her mother while battling the elements and trying to stay alive. Leading the investigation into her disappearance is Beverly, a state game warden, while 76-year-old Lena, a birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement home, becomes an unlikely armchair detective. As the search intensifies, the two start to wonder if Valerie’s vanishing was truly accidental.
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Dana is a Black writer in 1976 Los Angeles who is continually summoned to a plantation in early-1800s Maryland to protect the owner’s son, Rufus, and ensure that he grows up into the man that will father one of Dana’s ancestors. A classic from one of science fiction’s great masters, “Kindred” is similarly concerned with what we mean when we talk about “the old days” — who are we now, who would we have been then, and how do the atrocities of the past echo into the present?
Nothing catch your eye? Check out what's new in our catalog, or stop by in person to ask a librarian for a recommendation — we can't wait to help you find your next read!
