Yesteryear

DEBUT In her first novel, Burke renders 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. She is influencer Natalie Heller Mills, who lives on a custom-built farm in the Idaho mountains, not far from where she grew up. Natalie’s rustic farm and raw-milk lifestyle are fodder for her million-plus followers on social media, where she projects the image of the perfect Christian trad wife, living with her college-sweetheart husband (a political scion) and their five (soon to be six) kids, plus two nannies and a social media producer. Shortly after readers meet her, Natalie’s life begins to spiral out of control, resulting from actions revealed to readers much later in the two-pronged narrative. As things are unraveling, Natalie wakes to find herself in the mid-19th century, on an actual farm with different children who still call her mother. Desperation takes hold as she tries to find a way back to her “real” life.