Diana Gabaldon · 1991 · exile
The first of the Outlander saga. In 1945 Claire Randall, an English combat nurse on a second honeymoon in the Highlands, puts her hand on a standing stone at Craigh na Dun and wakes in 1743 - into clan country, redcoats, and a marriage of convenience to a young Highlander named Jamie Fraser. Note that Gabaldon mixes the real and the invented: Inverness and Fort William are real, while Craigh na Dun, Castle Leoch, Cranesmuir, Lallybroch and Wentworth are fictional and are sited here at plausible points in the landscape.
- 1Inverness
On a second honeymoon with Frank in the autumn of 1945, Claire goes out to a circle of standing stones on a hill above the town, puts her hand on the tallest of them, and falls two hundred years.
- 2Craigh na Dun
She comes to in 1743 to musket fire and a redcoat captain wearing her husband's face. Jonathan Randall, called Black Jack, is Frank's six-times-great-grandfather, and he is nothing whatever like Frank.
- 3Castle Leoch
Carried off by Dougal MacKenzie's men to the seat of clan MacKenzie: an English sassenach with a story nobody believes, kept as a guest who cannot leave and suspected of spying for both sides at once.
- 4Fort William
To keep her out of Randall's hands the Highlanders marry her to one of their own, and Jamie Fraser takes an English bride. When Randall takes her anyway, into the garrison at Fort William, it is Jamie who comes through the window after her.
- 5Cranesmuir
The village below Leoch, where Geillis Duncan is taken for a witch and Claire with her. Stripped and flogged before the kirk, she is saved by Jamie riding in - and afterwards she tells him the truth about the stones, and he believes her.
- 6Lallybroch
Broch Tuarach, Jamie's own estate under a broken tower, where for a little while there is a laird and his lady and something like peace.
- 7Wentworth Prison
Jamie is taken and condemned to hang, and Randall has him alone in the dungeons for a night that will never entirely end. Claire drives a herd of cattle through the wall to get him out.
- 8Abbey of Ste Anne
Across the Channel to the abbey where Jamie is carried more dead than living, and where Claire hauls him back from wanting to die. Ahead of them lies France, and a war they mean to stop before it starts.