‘Yesteryear’: Complicating tradwifery
Photograph by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels
Nathan Perrin
One of my friends recently shared with me a book that is popular on Booktok called Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. The plot is fairly simple and resembles an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Natalie, a tradwife influencer, wakes up one day to discover she is living in the actual 1800s and has to figure out a way to survive her strange new surroundings. Interspersed throughout the novel are glimpses of how Natalie arrived at this moment – an intense religious devotion, marrying someone incompetent and wrong for her, and discovering that she could earn money by being a tradwife online who watches over a farm called Yesteryear Ranch. She talks about how things were better in the old days and commits to shielding her multiple children away from the world. She ironically becomes the breadwinner for her family while her husband struggles to find meaning in his life and half-hearted conservative political ambitions.
I’ve read a few reviews that the portrayal of Natalie felt inauthentic and that the author seemed to not like the main character. I can’t speak to Burke’s feelings towards Natalie, but I can share that I’ve absolutely met people like Natalie when I lived in rural Kansas and Wisconsin. While not everyone who has a complementarian and traditional mindset with marriage is inherently unhappy and toxic, social media is full of examples of folks who advertise their life as the ultimate antidote to our current cultural moment.
Conservative evangelicals are fascinated with the farming tradwife lifestyle in part due to the popularity of Amish romance. A common critique of this is that Amish romance novels, particularly if they’re written from an outsider’s perspective, are appropriating traditional Anabaptist communities to wage culture war.
Valerie Weaver-Zercher wrote a phenomenal book detailing the conservative evangelical fascination with Amish fiction in “Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels.” After careful research, she wrote that conservative evangelicalism found an ideal hero in their culture wars. Weaver-Zercher writes, “[W]hen readers articulate their appreciation that Amish-themed novels are ‘clean reads’—books largely free of sexual scenes and passion-driven plotlines that would offend their conservative sexual ethic—their words express not just a personal literary preference but a dissident value system. Sexual chastity is imprinted in the genre… The heroines of Amish novels are, almost without exception, chaste—either virginal or in monogamous marriages—and chastity is widely celebrated in the category. Like the wearing of a chastity ring, the reading of Amish fiction reinforces the morality of an evangelical subculture, becoming for some Christian readers another way to bind themselves to a set of values and to be reminded of their faith commitments.”[i]
In the Mennonite and larger Anabaptist world, we roll our eyes at Amish romance novels, although I personally have a sense of humor about them. Whenever I’m in a relationship, I send pictures of the book covers to my partner and say things like: “We’re celebrities.” Because of Amish fiction, people assume I’m much more conservative than I actually am.
The irony we see with tradwife social media and complementarian theology is that there are successful women in both worlds who are making money from talking about how they shouldn’t be breadwinners.
I get that same discomfort whenever I see tradwife content, and “Yesteryear” brilliantly exposes why exactly this world is shallow and built on toxic theology. In the novel, without revealing any spoilers, different churches are revealed near Natalie’s family that show that the world isn’t a scary place meant to be run from. Instead of considering the worldviews of these more “liberal” churches, Natalie doubles down and insists on the tradwife lifestyle.
The irony is, of course, that Natalie is quite a successful businesswoman. She is the primary breadwinner in her family. When she is told that she is the embodiment of feminism, Natalie refuses to hear it through. But that is exactly the irony we see with tradwife social media and complementarian theology – there are successful women in both worlds who are making money from talking about how they shouldn’t be breadwinners.
If you want to have a hobby farm and dress up like you’re in the 1950s, go for it. There is nothing inherently problematic with that. This lifestyle becomes problematic when a Christian nationalist perspective emerges that distorts what it actually means to live simply in the world. The Anabaptists and Amish have a theology around simplicity that is mindful of the safety and care of their neighbors. When evangelicals write about us, they don’t take that into account and instead project their own culture wars on a group of people who don’t want to participate in them.
“Yesteryear” may not be highbrow literary fiction, however, the point of popular fiction is to entertain and, at times, educate, and this novel accomplishes both well. I’m grateful I overcame my own bias against popular fiction to give “Yesteryear” a shot.
“Yesteryear”should be required reading for every deconstructing Christian emerging out of that world, but also for folks on the outside trying to figure out why Christian nationalism appeals to people. The novel serves as both validation and an education tool. I’d highly recommend it for anyone who wants to see beyond the culture wars to the deeper problems behind them.
Nathan Perrin (he/him/his) is a writer and Anabaptist pastor in Chicagoland. He holds an MA in Quaker Studies and is a doctoral student studying Christian Community Development at Northern Seminary. His doctorate work centers on creating a writing program for nonprofits and churches to use to help under-resourced communities process trauma. His work has been published in the Dillydoun Review, Bangalore Review, Collateral Journal, Esoterica Magazine, etc. His forthcoming novella Memories of Green Rivers will be released in 2026 by Running Wild Press. He is also a screenwriter. For more information, visit www.nathanperrinwriter.com
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[i] Valerie Weaver-Zercher, Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), Kindle edition, 11.
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