See the Cover of Caro Claire Burke’s Debut Novel ‘Yesteryear’ (Exclusive)

What would you do if you woke up in a different time period?

Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel Yesteryear, due out in spring 2026, is a “gripping” and “electrifying” look at that very question, per its publisher Knopf. 

The novel follows Natalie Heller Mills, an influencer known for sharing her rustic lifestyle on social media. She has a handsome cowboy husband, six charming children and millions of followers, despite the backlash she gets from haters who deem her antifeminist.

But when Natalie wakes up one morning in 1805 — her husband replaced by a farmer, and her kids unrecognizable — she’s forced to confront the realities of truly living in the past, and find a way back home.

The novel’s subject matter felt particularly timely, Burke explains to PEOPLE — and writing Yesteryear provided her a way to confront that head-on.

“I’ve always tended to write about the things I’m most afraid of, and I think Yesteryear is evidence of that fact. I wrote this novel at a time when the world around me seemed filled with voices calling to turn the clock backwards.” the author explains. “And so — in an effort to understand, or maybe to regain a semblance of control — I decided to turn the clock fully backwards before anyone else could, and I wrote a story about what it looks like to fall back in time, in every sense of the word.”

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Burke also explains that time itself is more than just a plot point of Yesteryear.

“I hope readers will find the journey they take with Natalie to be as dizzying and gratifying as the experience I had writing it,” she says. “In particular, I’m incredibly grateful to John Gall, the creative director of Knopf, for so perfectly distilling the disorienting effects of backwards thinking with the cover he designed for Yesteryear.”

“I know that the present and the past serve as settings in a novel, but for me, in this novel, they feel like characters in every sense of the word.”

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Burke is also the co-host of the culture and politics podcast Diabolical Lies. Yesteryear is her debut novel.

Yesteryear will be published on April 7, 2026 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.