What happens to a trad wife influencer when she wakes up in 1855 and has to
actually do it?
Why were film producers bidding on this novel four years before it was
finished?
And when a story about white homesteaders in pre-Civil War America contains no
Black people at all, what is it quietly telling you?
Peter asks Afua what she read over the summer and gets a debut novel, a
four-year-old email she'd forgotten about, and a criticism that has nothing to
do with the plot.
Caro Claire Burke's Yesteryear drops a trad wife influencer — sourdough
starter, eight children, millions of followers — into an actual 1855 homestead
and makes her live there. Afua raced through it and gives it full marks for the
idea. Her objection sits somewhere else entirely, and it's the kind of absence
you can't unsee once someone points at it. Along the way: why publishers post
books to your house forever once you've written one, why Peter keeps being
asked to read 550 pages in ten days, and how a novel now gets optioned for film
before it has been written.
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[0:26] The one thing Afua only lets herself read in summer
[3:13] Books arrive forever once you're published, and the etiquette nobody
explains
[8:42] The novel Afua found sitting in her own inbox, four years early
[12:47] Sourdough, eight children, and a fantasy of the American past
[18:03] Peter on class and labour, and why Burke chose 1855
[20:28] Afua's real objection, and it isn't the plot
[21:13] The Legacy Book Club verdict, in three separate scores
Stay connected with Legacy:
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TikTok: @legacy_productions
Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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