‘Yesteryear’ Auction Has Four Bids; Anne Hathaway, Elizabeth Banks Chasing

EXCLUSIVE: In the kind of brisk battle over a book we would often see yesteryear but not so often lately, a ferocious auction is underway this week that has names like Anne Hathaway and Elizabeth Banks in the mix. This is for Yesteryear, a novel by Caro Claire Burke, who has had work published in The Atlantic and Marie Claire, has an ongoing short story project called Cover Stories that has a following on Instagram and Substack, and is an editor at Katie Couric Media.

The Dish hears that solid six-figure offers are in from Amazon MGM and Apple (with Hathaway attached to those bids), Universal for Banks and Paramount. UTA is brokering and the auction is in the countering stage and should be wrapped up by the beginning of next week.

What is Yesteryear? Here’s the deal, from a submission to publishers that Deadline got hold of: Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse on a working ranch is rustic and artfully cluttered, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy, her oldest daughter beginning to ask questions about whether her mother is a “trade wife”? What Natalie’s followers — all 8 million of them — don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re just jealous. Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal of what life should be — and just so happens to be building an empire from it.  

Then she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children — they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is lit by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and disheveled, her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Her “daughter” informs her it’s 1805 — where just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade sourdough for her Instagram, she’s now expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her hands bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? Already reckoning with forces beyond her control, when Natalie becomes pregnant with her new “husband’s” child, it quickly becomes apparent that it doesn’t matter how she got here — all that matters is how she gets out.

It plays out, evocative of The Stepford Wives mixed with Leave the World Behind, with a bit of Black Mirror in there and the kind of biting social commentary Margaret Atwood was known for. On the publishing front, the book had 10 publishing houses bidding, and was won by Knopf in a big money deal. We’ll keep you posted on how this plays out.