Published July 21, 2026 03:41AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Caro Claire Burke\u2019s 2026 novel Yesteryear<\/i> is a hit. With multiple weeks as #1 on the New York Times<\/i> hardcover bestsellers list and an Amazon MGM movie starring Anne Hathaway in the works, its story of a trad wife influencer named Natalie Heller Mills who wakes up in 1855 living the very real pioneer life she\u2019d been portraying online has clearly been connecting with audiences.<\/p>\n
On the surface, Yesteryear <\/i>wryly caricatures people like Hannah and Daniel Neeleman, the \u201ctrad\u201d homesteading couple behind the massively successful Ballerina Farm<\/a> accounts and brand of consumer goods<\/a>. Many readers see the novel as a skewering portrayal of the hypocrisy behind the ways some influencers use modern forms of marketing and consumer culture to sell old-fashioned ideals, values, and ways of life that they themselves do not fully embody.<\/p>\n However, one of the things that makes the book complicated and interesting is that a handful of the guiding values Natalie\u2019s online presence represents, however poorly, are also some of the north stars for those of us who love the outdoors: sustainability, minimalism, self-sufficiency, and anti-consumerism, to name a few. Aren\u2019t those good things? To my mind, the novel never lands on a definitive damnation or salvation for Natalie and the digital influencer lifestyle she represents. Instead, it explores the very human desires and tensions that live behind our tiny, modern screens.<\/p>\n To better understand the realities behind influencing in the homesteading and outdoor spaces, I talked to three very different digital creators: Katie Bou\u00e9<\/a>, an author and influencer with a half-acre homestead near Salt Lake City; Jill Winger<\/a>, podcaster, author, and the influencer behind the massively popular The Prairie Homestead<\/a>; and DJ Brandt<\/a>, professional free ride mountain biker, self-described \u201chalf influencer and half mountain biker,\u201d and my soon-to-be brother in law. They walked me through the realities of what they do, and I think I can confidently say there\u2019s not a Natalie Heller Mills in the bunch.<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s Note: Reader, beware. Spoilers abound below.<\/i><\/p>\n Hopefully in the year 2026, it\u2019s no secret that the version of a person you encounter online is<\/i> just a version, a curated set of images or videos that create a character, which may or may not approximate who that person is in real life. However, no matter how obvious this versioning may seem, we can all feel parasocial connections to people we\u2019ve never met, attached to their online presentation, rooting for its wins and brokenhearted when it comes up short of our expectations by being \u2026 real<\/i>. For their part, influencers seem to either embrace the gap by pointing toward it in the content they make or reject it by refusing to acknowledge the things their audience can\u2019t see that would undermine it.<\/p>\n Yesteryear<\/i> is clearly interested in the latter type of influencer, staging this tension in a paradigmatic modern consumer-culture locale: a Target with an in-store Starbucks. As Natalie and her daughters participate in a most hallowed caffeinated consumption ritual, she bumps into a high school classmate who quickly groks the gap between online Natalie (who would never shop somewhere like Target) and the real Natalie standing before her, happily floating \u201calong beneath the mind-numbing fluorescence.\u201d<\/p>\n When I asked Bou\u00e9, Winger, and Brandt questions about the \u201creal\u201d vs. the \u201conline\u201d of themselves, each brought a unique perspective, but they converged on one point: no matter how hard you try, there\u2019s no way for all the real messiness of life to come through on the feed. But that doesn\u2019t make trying not worth the effort.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s something that\u2019s always been really important to me: thinking about the community and the audience, readers, consumers, followers,\u201d Bou\u00e9 said. \u201cYou have to treat them well and respectfully. And I think that part of that is showing the whole truth.\u201d To do that, Bou\u00e9 has done things like creating a series of mulch hauling videos so her Instagram audience can see more of the un-aesthetic realities behind what she does day to day.<\/p>\n\u201cAuthenticity\u201d Is a Tricky Business<\/h2>\n