The year is 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon - when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach - an "outlander" - in a Scotland torn by war and raiding Highland clans in the year of our Lord...1743. Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into intrigues...

Jamie Fraser knows from his time-traveling wife Claire that, no matter how unlikely it seems, America will win the Revolutionary War. But fighting for the eventual winner is no guarantee of safety. And worse still, the possibility of pointing a weapon at his own son, a young officer in the British army, haunts Jamie's every thought. In the relative safety of the 20th century, their daughter, Brianna, and her husband experience the unfolding drama...

In 1771, Scotsman James Fraser and his wife Claire Randall, a time-traveler from the twentieth century, have emigrated to the Royal County of North Carolina. Dissidents are stirring throughout the colonies. Claire forewarns James of the impending war and the dangers it may bring them. Will her knowledge of America's tumultuous revolution be enough to guide them through a dangerously uncertain future?

"It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser's Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible. Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell's teakettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his tenants are split and it won't...

In eighteenth-century Scotland, Claire Randall and her raven-haired daughter, Brianna, return to the majestic hills where Claire recalls the love of her life--gallant warrior James Fraser.