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Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is one of the buzziest books out this year, and for good reason. It is dripping with satire centered around the growing and controversial tradwife movement. And whether you empathize with or despise its protagonist (who identifies as a tradwife) it’s bound to make you have some sort of reaction, trust me. Which is why I’m hoping it will drive a ton of discussion for the Egalitarian Book Club throughout June. (See the recommended reading schedule in the Community Notes section at the bottom of this post.)

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From its first few pages, I could not stop rolling my eyes because, in my opinion, the protagonist, Natalie Heller Mills, is insufferable. As if giving an official interview, she offers a first-person account of her day-to-day life as a tradwife, going on and on and on about how ‘perfect’ (she actually uses that word!) her life is on Yesteryear Ranch, where she lives with her husband, Caleb, and their five children, with another child on the way… and a lot of help.

Though Natalie likes to present herself online as a naturally gifted and beautiful woman and devoted mother who stays at home to look after and educate her children while doing domestic work (like making bread and jam from scratch) to uphold ‘traditional’ values while her husband labors on the ranch, readers learn right away that she and her husband have a lot of help. They have two nannies, a content producer, and ranch hands, as well as modern industrial-grade kitchen equipment, and often shop at chain stores for supplies and food staples. Natalie even admits (to the readers) to outsourcing the products she sells with the ranch’s logo on it from various countries overseas, while at the same time harshly criticizing and judging the women who she perceives as harshly criticizing and judging her— the ‘Angry Women’ who she perceives as being jealous of her and her lifestyle.

Yet despite the picturesque life Natalie describes and tries to curate, it’s clear that there is an underlayer of her personal life and psyche that she does not share on social media, and that in many instances she is performing. She talks about how certain things are good practice for the life she’s supposedly curating, and even tells herself at one point, “Play along, Natalie. Say your lines.” She is also constantly praying to God and reciting Bible verses, though the utterances of the prayers and verses themselves are odd and suspect, constantly blurring the lines between what Natalie is performing and what she truly believes.

At the end of Part I, readers know Natalie resents her husband but are also left guessing what she plans to do next, which will likely involve her former content producer and husband’s political aspirations.

When Natalie wakes up at Yesteryear Ranch in 1855 in Part II, she begins to confront what real ‘traditional’ life on the ranch would entail for her and has a hard time adjusting for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, readers also encounter more of Natalie’s present-day backstory at the beginning of Part II, which glosses over her early life living with a sister and single mother who tells romantic tales of yesteryear pioneers, her religious upbringing, and her early years at college when she meets and marries her husband then falls pregnant.

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While we are introduced to a certain intolerable version of Natalie at the beginning of the novel, the Natalie who is performing, I can’t shake the feeling that I am supposed to empathize with her character on some level, even when I don’t want to, especially when she is transported back to 1855 for reasons unknown and when she feels like an outsider in college.

After reading the first 90 pages, however, I am still left wondering how deeply her religious upbringing influenced her and her beliefs and her compulsive need to perform perfection, and whether her present-day husband is as innocent and docile as he is being presented when he clearly has some past indiscretions and is being juxtaposed to the 1855-version of her husband who is violent. I wonder: Is Natalie’s husband essentially the same across centuries? And will her husband’s character end up demonstrating how the monster of misogyny will not die across centuries?

I am anticipating that the remainder of this novel will reveal some of Natalie’s unresolved trauma, once she stops insisting on how ‘perfect’ everything is. But whether she will deal with that trauma in a healthy or unhinged way or double-down in her insistence on a performance of ‘traditional values’ instead remains unclear. I also keep hearing about the major twist at the end of this novel, for which I have scant details, and am looking forward to seeing what it’s all about and am not-so-secretly hoping that it’s a bit unhinged.

I do worry, however, that some readers may not understand this novel’s satirical elements, or the complex layers of its protagonist. And I am also wondering whether the 1855 scenes will enhance or distract from Natalie’s main narrative and character arc, and wonder if this novel will devolve into misogynistic or ‘Angry Woman’ tropes? Either way, I am definitely invested in this ride so far and can’t wait to see what others think! This novel prompts so much to talk about, so let’s chat!

Have you read Yesteryear yet, or want to read it? Share your thoughts in the comments so we can discuss it. No spoilers, please!

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© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.

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Community Notes (New!)

💬This week’s dialogue is up!💬

What does ‘success’ as a writer actually look like for you—not what you think it should look like, but what you genuinely want it to look like? Let’s discuss—all are able to join this public chat thread!

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In this new section of Daily Drafts & Dialogues, you will see additional notes on posts and what’s going on in the broader Daily Drafts & Dialogues community, more in depth questions to spur further dialogue, polls, discounts, contest opportunities, helpful links and resources, and opportunities to have your comments and work featured in the new Community Spotlight section below in future posts.

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Join the PUBLIC chat thread for Egalitarian Book Club’s May pick: Westward Women by Alice Martin. Warning: Spoilers are allowed in this chat thread since we’ll be using it to discuss the whole book!

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Egalitarian Book Club

CURRENTLY READING

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Week 1 (June 1-7) — Part I and Part II Chapters 1- 11

Week 2 (June 8- 14) — Part II Chapters 12- 27

Week 3 (June 15- 21) — Part II Chapters 28- 42

Week 4 (June 22- 30) — Finish Book

A public chat thread will be shared in Substack to discuss the entire book at the end of the month. Until then, join our Buddy Read in Storygraph to chat about the book as you read it.

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JULY BOOK: TBD

A poll will be posted in Storygraph for this book selection soon! Join the club so you’re ready to cast your vote when it goes live.

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Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar is a short story collection that is easy to savor, as each of its tales are imbued with a thread of magical storytelling that will transport you to unusual and beautiful places you never knew you wanted to visit before reading them. Yet they each carry bittersweet, and all too realistic, parables women and displaced people will be able to understand in their bones. Truthfully, it’s been some time since I’ve read stories so hauntingly tragic yet deeply heartening as these.

While each tale in this collection contains magical elements and hints of magical realism, one would be remiss if they didn’t also mention how those literary elements and techniques work to subvert traditional folklore and science fiction storytelling traditions, which are usually saturated with overtly masculine preoccupations of conquests, especially conquests of women. At their core, these stories rely on their magical elements and lyrical prose to highlight relationships between women who share, heal, communicate, and rebuild in the wake of or despite hardship and being pursued by those who attempt to conquer them. So, if you’ve been seeking fairytales where the women save themselves by being the authentic women they always were— magical, strong, kind, smart, resourceful, etc.— as they support one another, then you will want to read this collection.

Each story in this collection is full of metaphors and metaphoric language, just as traditional fairytales and storytelling are. In Seasons of Glass and Iron, the namesake of the collection, the seven pairs of iron shoes Tabitha must wear down to free her husband represent the heavy burdens, emotional labor, and continuous pain women are conditioned to endure to maintain their relationships with men, namely marriages. These iron shoes contrast with those magical shoes often given to male characters in folklore that lighten their steps and make exploration easy (winged sandals, satin slippers that cloak one in invisibility, etc.). The apples Tabitha eats in the story also contrast with those apples in traditional stories like The Garden of Eden, where Eve eats the apple at a great cost for all humanity, and in Snow White, where the apple puts Snow White into a deep death-like sleep. Instead of being a source of downfall, in this story, however, sharing and eating apples becomes an act of communion, shared knowledge, and queer intimacy between Tabitha and Amira.

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Stories like Florilegia; or, Some Lies About Flowers use the creation of a woman out of flora to interrogate how society artificially constructs women to fulfill patriarchal duties and desires. In A Tale of Ash in Seven Birds, the clashes between birds and the wizard-nation function as a metaphor for the devastation of empires and the resilience of marginalized peoples fighting to protect their culture, memories, and voices. The magical birds clashing in battle and transforming over time serve as a metaphor for diaspora, colonialism, the trauma of forced migration, and represent the struggle to find a new homeland and navigate how the world absorbs or rejects refugees. And in Green Book, the spirit of a woman trapped inside a text is a metaphor for how society and men often try to ‘own’ women through storytelling, treating them like objects to be read and possessed rather than complex human beings to be engaged with or understood.

Minerals, glass, stones, and various inanimate objects are also used in many of the stories to symbolize pathological obsession, unrequited love, and women’s sanity, often highlighting the dangerous, intoxicating pull of the unknown and how women’s internal desires are often pathologized by external structures and the male perspective or male gaze. Music also serves as a profound symbol of communication, healing, and survival, representing the liberating, connective magic of women’s voices in a world structured to isolate and oppress them and functions as a vehicle for expressing longing, melancholy, and restless passion, allowing characters to raise their voices in song to reclaim their agency. And across the collection, language and sound are depicted as active magic, appearing in mystical ways. Singing, writing, or speaking is never just passive entertainment in this collection as it actively reshapes the characters’ realities and allows them to connect over borders both real and imagined.

Open communication and love between women are also central to each story in this collection. The collection centers on the power of women connecting with one another, exploring how women, who are often trapped by societal expectations or patriarchal fairytale curses, find solace, understanding, and liberation through friendship and queer partnership. In The Truth About Owls an immigrant girl navigating a new country finds solace and a deep bond with the caretaker of an owl, demonstrating how women provide maternal and sisterly comfort across generations and distances. In Madeleine, a young woman grieving her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s disease, who is also participating in an experimental drug trial, experiences intense flashbacks and visions in which she discovers a deep, dreamlike friendship with another woman. And in A Hollow Play, a girl named Emily navigates the pain of losing her best friend, Paige, by finding a surprising sense of community among a group of magical creative creatures from another realm who present themselves as women and are dealing with their own yearning for a lost home.

Overall, I would recommend this collection to readers who enjoy getting lost in lyrical prose and women-centered stories. I would also recommend it to those readers who enjoy unpacking literary devices and deeper meaning from what they read.

Here are some notable passages from the book:

“A witch is a kind of justice in the world. It makes for a fine story. No one wants to admit the truth, for all it stares them plainly in the face.”

“Steal from a woman long enough, and a witch is what she’ll become.”

“Wizards—their power lies in naming. They shape reality because they tell a good story. Tell a different one—one of your choosing, one of your desire—and teach it to the world until it learns your truth and makes room for it.”

Have you read this book yet, or plan to read it soon? Leave a comment to start a discussion. Or tell us what we should read and review next!

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© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.

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Daily Drafts & Dialogues is fueled by loyal readers, caffeine, and shares with kind words, so any support you can offer to keep it and me going is greatly appreciated. Sincerely, thank you so much! — K.E. Creighton

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Community Notes (New!)

💬Weekend Dialogue💬

Do you prefer reading lyrical prose or more literal prose? Poetic writing or action-packed writing? Shakespeare or Hemingway?

Remember: Your thoughtful comment on this post could be featured with a link to your profile and byline in the new Daily Drafts & Dialogues Community Spotlight section (below) in a future post. I’m looking forward to keeping this conversation going!

In this new section of Daily Drafts & Dialogues, you will see additional notes on posts and what’s going on in the broader Daily Drafts & Dialogues community, more in depth questions to spur further dialogue, polls, discounts, contest opportunities, helpful links and resources, and opportunities to have your comments and work featured in the new Community Spotlight section below in future posts.

Community Spotlight

This new section will FEATURE YOUR WORK AND VOICES. Leave a thoughtful comment on a Daily Drafts & Dialogues post for a chance to have your writing, links, and profile featured here.

Daily Drafters Features and Exclusives

PAID SUBSCRIBERS: Check the chat for daily writing prompts, tips, inspiration, feedback, dialogues, and other exclusive content. And get your work and byline featured here in a future post!

TODAY: There’s still time to join this week’s Community Chat Thread, where you can share your responses to this week’s writing prompts or anything else you worked on this past week that you’d like to discuss or receive feedback on!

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Egalitarian Book Club

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Currently Reading: Westward Women by Alice Martin (Join the buddy read here.)

Recommended Reading Schedule:

Week 1 (May 1-10) — Chap. 1-7 (Part I)

Week 2 (May 11- 17) — Chap. 8-14 (Part II- III)

Week 3 (May 18- 24) — Chap. 15-21 (Part III- IV)

Week 4 (May 25- 31) — Part V, remaining chapters

June Pick:

Votes are in! We’ll be reading Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke in June.

Join the buddy read here. And stay tuned for a recommended reading schedule.

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Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi offers readers the rare opportunity to see the world from Cleopatra’s perspective and rewrite the versions of her history that have been destroyed, lost, or written by men who include her enemies. And it is a captivating read. Readers will become entranced by the complexities of who Cleopatra was and the decisions she could h…

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It’s been a while since I shared Influential Books (Part 1: Childhood) and Influential Books (Part 2: Adolescence), so here’s a quick recap of what’s included on those lists, though you’ll want to check out each post to see my notes regarding why and how they made it onto those lists.

Influential Books (Childhood)

• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Send…

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I went to see the most recent rendition of Wuthering Heights in theaters on Valentine’s Day and still can’t stop thinking about it. But this is primarily because others won’t stop talking about it and how much they vehemently loved or hated it— though somewhere deep down, I believe such controversial and contradictory takes would have been more than eno…

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