Yesteryear Summary & ending explained

The light in Idaho in winter is the best light in the world for selling bread.

I knew that the way other women know their children's birthdays. At seven in the morning it came in low over the snow, through the kitchen window, and turned my flour into gold dust. By then the nannies had cleared the breakfast plates, the industrial oven behind the pantry door was preheated, and my five children had been dressed in linen in shades of oatmeal. The sixth was on the way, round under my apron. Pregnancy photographed beautifully.

"Hands in the dough," I said. "Big smile, Clementine. A real one."

My eldest pulled her lips back from her teeth. She was old enough now to know the difference between a real smile and the one I wanted, and old enough to give me neither.

"Again," I said. "Think of something nice."

Outside, my husband crossed the yard in his hat and boots, carrying a bucket he had not filled. Caleb looked like a cowboy. That was his whole job. The cattle were handled by men we paid, and the bucket would go back in the barn the moment the camera stopped.

This was Yesteryear Ranch, and I was its star. Eight million people watched me knead, churn, sew and pray. They believed I lived without screens, without help, without the modern world, and they loved me for it. The angry women online, the ones with Ivy League degrees and opinions about my uterus, called me a fraud and a traitor to my sex. They were jealous. I had an Ivy League education too. I had simply chosen better.

That winter, though, the house had gone quiet in a way I didn't like, the way a house goes quiet before a storm. My husband had started taking long walks with his phone.

That night, Caleb and I knelt beside our bed and prayed for the future. I asked God to make it great.

When I opened my eyes, the room was freezing, the bed was wrong, and there was no light anywhere.