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The Author of Yesteryear Knows Why Tradwives Are So Popular

An interview with Caro Claire Burke, the novelist behind one of the buzziest books of the year.

By Rebecca Onion,

May 06, 20264:14 PM

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Creeping up the New York Times fiction bestseller list, landing at No. 3 after three weeks on the list, is what’s shaping up to be one of the buzziest literary debuts of 2026: Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke. The novel follows a “tradwife”—a woman adhering to a conservative, religious model of marriage, in which men earn money and make decisions and women stay home, baking bread, wrangling lots of kids, and, sometimes, sharing their lives online for followers dreaming of a similar lifestyle—who suddenly wakes up one morning to find herself no longer an influencer with a staff and a gorgeous kitchen, but instead living on a real-deal 19^th-century homestead. How’d she get there? Suffice to say, there’s a twist involved.

Lately, it feels as if there are more new books with tradwife main characters than you can shake a butter churn at. We’ve got 2024’s mock true-crime novel Tradwife, by T.C. Parker; last year’s soapy thriller The Tradwife’s Secret, by Liane Child; this February’s folk horror (and USA Today bestseller) Trad Wife, by Saratoga Schaefer; next month’s terrifying Trad Wife, by horror darling Sarah Langan; and, in August, Tradwife, by Michelle Brandon, a beach read about a conservative town’s dirty little secrets. There’s something about the dual life of the tradwife—that inevitable difference between what she preaches on your screen and what’s actually going on in her house and her head—that makes her ideal territory for a novelist looking to craft a story about Our Modern Condition. The results, especially in the hands of people working in the horror genre, can be deeply unsettling.

Yesteryear

By Caro Claire Burke. Knopf.

What makes Yesteryear different from all these similarly themed novels, besides not containing the words Trad Wife in the title? Why has it climbed the NYT list, become a GMA Book Club pick, and already been optioned to be a movie produced by and starring Anne Hathaway? I have my theories. Yesteryear is prime conversation fodder for readers who like to talk about female characters and their choices. The central tradwife, Natalie Heller Mills, an ambitious Harvard girl raised by a single mom and married very young to the doltish scion of a political family, is utterly detestable, and Burke writes her with an acid pen. And the story of Yesteryear is high-concept in a way that appeals to readers interested in playing games of what if.

Burke agreed to take some time from her book tour to talk about Yesteryear’s reception, how she crafted the characters of Natalie and her silly husband Caleb, and some of the most popular tradwives in the game. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Slate: I read your book, then I started listening to your podcast, and I heard your co-host [Katie Gatti Tassin] mention that there are tradwives on Reddit talking about Yesteryear. I had to look it up. Have you seen this? 

Caro Claire Burke: I haven’t checked. So whatever your research is, you will be enlightening me.

Well, let me summarize what they’re saying. A lot of them actually really like the book, because they view it as a story about a kind of tradwife who is living an inauthentic life. As they see it, the book doesn’t indict the idea of a tradwife—it indicts people like Natalie, the main character, who fake it on social media and don’t actually like their kids. That aspect of Natalie’s character provides them with a handy way to disidentify with Natalie. Does that surprise you? 

To be honest, it doesn’t surprise me, because one criticism I’ve received has come from a few secular and liberal women, who might say this novel isn’t really an incrimination of a number of baseline conservative values, or at least values that some conservatives purport to hold, about prioritizing family or motherhood. Instead, I think Natalie is very obviously an anomaly. Because of that, I never really thought that women who hold those values would feel as if their whole way of life was being incriminated.

Read more: “Yesteryear” book interview: Caro Claire Burke knows why tradwives like Ballerina Farm are so popular – Slate

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