Caro Claire Burke

Natalie lives a perfect, traditional lifestyle - and her followers are sick with envy. Her charming farmhouse on her working ranch is artfully cluttered, her husband is a handsome cowboy and her homemade sourdough boules are each more beautiful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers and industrial-grade ovens behind the scenes? What her followers don't know won't hurt them.

Then, one morning, Natalie wakes up in a strange, horrible version of reality. Her home, her husband, her children - they're all familiar, but something's off. Is this a hoax? A reality show? A test from God? Natalie knows just two things for sure: this isn't her perfect life, and she must escape, by any means possible.

As darkly funny as it is shocking and gripping. Yesteryear is an electrifying examination of tradition, fame, faith and the grand performance of womanhood. from a thrilling new talent in fiction.

Yesteryear

biddy

All men wanted to become legends. It was so embarassing.

Bekki

And who was I? A flawless Christian woman. The manic pixie American dream girl of this nation’s deepest, darkest fantasies. The mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. Like a nun in a porno, it didn’t make sense, but also, by God: it worked. My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.

The boys would keep us fed when we were old and feeble, I liked to say, but the girls? They would dance around our wheelchairs, toss rose petals over our graves. Plus, I’ll admit it: they were easier to train. The boys occasionally resisted or got frustrated or bored, but not the girls. They could perform on film for hours without complaint, just like their mama.

I picked up the phone and pressed record, right as Clementine was getting into the passenger seat. 

“Girls,” I said, smiling into the lit-up screen, “what did you get at our very special trip to Target today?” 

Jessa and Junebug squealed in response: “A stuffie!” “Sparkly lotion!” “What about you, Clementine?”

 I angled the camera so it featured me, grinning, and Clementine’s form in the passenger seat. 

Clementine had gotten a new shade of nail polish. But she didn’t reply. 

“Clementine, what did you get at—” “Stop filming me.” I froze. My face flooded with heat. She’d never done that before. Not once.

When it comes to consent, do you think children are capable of— 

When it comes to consent and the use of children’s likenesses on public social media accounts— 

“Actually, I need to take a quick break to use the restroom. Would that be all right?”

“Now,” I said, “let’s pray on it.” 

We kneeled together at the foot of the couch. I pressed my forehead into my clasped hands and tried to breathe the anger out of me, but I couldn’t. 

It was like a germ. It just kept replicating in my stomach. 

Usually my husband’s failures were easy to forgive, but tonight I wanted to kill him. 

I could practically see his insipid prayers float past me, in little Comic Sans thought bubbles.

" Please keep my kids safe, Lord, along with the chickens. Help my wife continue to love me. A blow job would be nice, Lord, and if it’s not too much, I’d like the strength to become something memorable. I’d like to become a legend."

I wanted the whole entire world to see itself through my eyes. 

A new level of influence. That’s not the kind of thing you ask for directly, though, so I settled for something simpler. 

Please let this plan work, Lord. Please don’t let her win. 

And please give my husband a spine. I’m tired of him needing to borrow mine. Amen.

You’re so strong, just a few more pushes now, you can do this, Mama— 

In the instant before my daughter came screaming into the world, I felt, for the second time in my life, a debilitating certainty of the wrongness of the situation. 

I felt this certainty in the deepest parts of my body, and so it seemed inevitable that He would intervene before this mistake of parenthood developed further. 

Or maybe He was going to punish me in some other way: Caleb was going to slip and fall and hit his head on the corner of the bed, my mother was going to suffer a fatal car accident on the way to the hospital.

A trade must take place for this life to enter the world. 

As my body slowly halved open like a peach, I realized it was me who was losing my life; me who would vanish from the world to make room for this new child.

For one single moment, I wished the child gone. 

Not just out of me, but out of this world. 

Then the room was filled with her bellowing, and the fear fell away, and the love—or something like it—came tunneling back through.

“It’s huge.” “I know,” I said, matching her tone. “I told Caleb it was way too big.” 

That was the way women operated in my community: if you wanted to be a wealthy Christian woman and maintain good standing, you needed to publicly disavow your luxuries in order to maintain possession of them. 

It was a strange tug-and-pull I’d borne witness to my entire life. 

The only surprise was that it was finally happening to me. 

I was becoming the kind of woman other women were jealous of.

 Each time I looked at the ring, I felt an intoxicating combination of embarrassment and glee. 

It was a rich, decadent piece of jewelry. 

If I looked at it for too long, I started to feel sick. 

It was too much, it was a shameful display of wealth, I should give it back and demand we find something smaller, and also: I’d launch a holy war before I parted with it.

As for Caleb, he insisted it was a perfect diamond for a woman like me. I was a flawless woman, he said. 

“I’ve been thinking about it, you know,” she whispered. 

“Getting birth control. Bryce doesn’t believe in it, but I heard you can just go to the doctor and get it. Without them knowing, I mean.” 

I sat up, startling her, and hissed, “Birth control? Lying to your husband? These are sins, Abigail.” 

“I’m sorry you’re having a hard time, but it’s not fair for you to project your issues onto my life.”

At one point he glanced out the side of the driver window and said, “See that?” 

 As he set down the soda, burped, and rolled into a long monologue about how we should file right away for dark sky protections, I reminded myself to set screen limits for my husband when we got home. 

He’d been spending too much time on YouTube these days. He was starting to sound like a hick.

“Well,” I said. “I’ll just let you get to it, then!” 

“Oh, and what’s your Instagram handle? I’d love to follow you!” 

“Oh. I don’t have Instagram, actually.” 

This was the strangeness of becoming famous online. 

I had a million followers, I could access more people in a single moment than any European king of the last thousand years, and then someone could effortlessly wipe my entire kingdom away with a single sentence: I don’t have Instagram.

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