In a new thriller, a ‘tradwife’ influencer wakes up in 1855

Depending on your appetite for schadenfreude, it’s been an upsetting or entertaining news cycle for faith-forward influencers. Formerly Mormon content creator Taylor Frankie Paul, who ascended from TikTok virality to unscripted stardom in Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” was stripped of her titular role in “The Bachelorette” just days before the season premiere after a string of domestic violence allegations and a leaked video that exposed her physically assaulting ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen. Days later, Paul’s “Mormon Wives” co-star Jordan Ngatikaura filed for divorce — via TMZ — from wife and fellow cast member Jessi Draper. In an interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Draper revealed a tumultuous relationship with Ngatikaura, in which he allegedly controlled, surveilled and emotionally abused her.

This is the stage set for the release of Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel “Yesteryear,” a satirical thriller in which Christian tradwife influencer Natalie awakes in an 1855 homestead with no explanation and no escape. The farmhouse is crumbling, the children are strangers and the woods are laced with bear traps; unsure whether she’s a victim of kidnapping, an immersive reality show or a divine test of faith, Natalie must perform her God-fearing wifely duties in earnest while uncovering the truth.

Tradwives and mommy bloggers are characterized by a cartoonishly slick and sanctimonious femininity; they perform choreographed dances with obedient children, bake sourdough bread, offer prayers and affiliate codes in the same breath. Tapping into the soft skills that for millennia have allowed women to profit outside the bounds of conventional economy, the tradwife offers a vision of purity to her online audience in exchange for engagement and direct or indirect income. Captive in bucolic panopticons, their lives are at once aesthetically alluring, depressingly regressive and anthropologically fascinating.

A common — and, in my opinion, boring — criticism of influencers as a whole is that the attention or money they receive is disproportionate to what they deserve. They are often beautiful but rarely talented, the argument goes; vapid and selfish, they are ill-equipped to wield the power of influence. “Yesteryear” strays from this well-worn narrative with Natalie, a deliciously unlikable protagonist whose greatest flaw is her competence. Burke deftly paints a portrait of a woman whose sharp edges and supreme capability put her at odds with everyone in her life; ambitious and arrogant, she struggles to connect with the provincial expectations of her family and the feminist ideals of her classmates at Harvard. She’s objectively off-putting, which makes her bitingly human.

When Natalie meets her husband, Caleb, in a church group, he offers “what every good Christian girl back home claimed to want”: a farm near her mother and a gaggle of children. Caleb is the wayward son of a ruthless politician and a pill-popping socialite, “the runt of an American dynasty,” spineless and sweetly stupid. He affirms his masculinity in the manosphere — a neoconservative corner of the internet devoted to misogyny, fitness and conspiracy theories — while providing to Natalie little more than daddy’s money and the perfunctory production of genetic material.

After a crash course in evangelical social media strategy and a hefty investment from her father-in-law, determined Natalie turns their doomed ranch — Caleb can’t stop killing cows — into a successful facsimile of the perfect life. She performs humble Christian motherhood with aplomb, her antisocial personality tucked away as deftly as the farmhouse kitchen’s off-camera dishwasher. In real life, Natalie is detached from her children and disdainful of her spouse, prone to violent outbursts as the farm spins out of her control. She refers to her hidden help by title — Nanny Louise, Producer Shannon — like they’re characters in a play, and even she succumbs to the caustic gaze of her audience: “Spending so much time in the world of Online Natalie, I sometimes found myself actively uncomfortable, almost revolted, by the discombobulation of my offline life. The piles of dishes in the sink. The silent watchful eye of my daughter, no musical overlay to soften our interactions…Terrible. Like rubbing velvet the wrong way.” Of course, no influencer plot would be complete without the threat of online cancellation — and just when things can’t get any worse, Natalie enters the parallel universe of the past.

In 1855, Natalie is unsure who’s watching — a cruel producer? God? The book’s playful interrogation of traditional gender expectations is sharpened with the introduction of 1855 Caleb, a fantasy and a nightmare, a stern, quiet man who Natalie finds both terrifying and alluring. Her children are creepily strange and familiar at once, body-snatchers whose survival skills far outpace her own. With an eye for eerie detail, Burke balances the tightly-wound mystery with cinematic descriptions of homesteading life and the occasional moment of beauty as Natalie’s resistance is tested.

A tradwife influencer’s public meltdown or toxic relationship prods at the artifice and hypocrisy of aspirational Christian content, but these scandals also reveal an uncomfortable relationship between creators and their audience. Whether we consume their content as genuine fans or jeering critics, we’re still offering up our engagement. What makes “Yesteryear” more than a giddy, gory tale of a tradwife’s comeuppance is its care in grappling with the attention economy and the troubling legacy of the last decade, in which cults of personality have seeped from entertainment into politics. Bolstered in part by the farm’s popularity, Natalie’s father-in-law embarks on a frothy, fear-mongering presidential campaign; when Natalie brushes off his bigotry as part of the game, Producer Shannon counters, “Do you honestly think there are no consequences to performance?”

To return, briefly, to “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”: Taylor Frankie Paul’s leaked video was a difficult watch for many reasons, but the most disturbing moment was the reveal of her young daughter, present but barely in frame. Ngatikaura reportedly sold his divorce to TMZ before informing his children. In the same news cycle, Joseph Duggar, former star of the mid-aughts evangelical reality series “19 Kids & Counting,” was arrested on charges of child molestation. Nothing about it was entertaining. It’s one thing to revel in a public figure’s self-inflicted unraveling, but when kids are involved, the role of the spectator becomes more complex. Without sacrificing the book’s dark humor, Burke doesn’t shy away from the repercussions of Natalie’s choices, and scenes with her children are the most frustrating and emotionally resonant.

I have no solution for the fraught dynamics of social media, besides perhaps throwing one’s phone in a lake, and “Yesteryear’s” target audience isn’t likely to heed that advice. (I know I won’t.) Instead, the book offers a bitingly funny and occasionally heartbreaking twist on the classic Instagram-versus-reality story, and a space to address our own culpability within the safe confines of fiction.

Arata is the bestselling author of “You Have a New Memory.” She lives in Los Angeles.

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