Recently, An Echo In The Bone, the latest book in the Outlander series was released, and I found myself thinking, wow, it’s been a long time since Gabaldon wrote an Outlander novel, and… where did I leave off in this series? I couldn’t remember enough about it, so I thought the best way to remedy that was to start over. No easy task when you consider the size of these novels. But start over I did with the first of the series, Outlander.

Englishwoman Claire Randall and her husband Frank are on a sort of belated honeymoon in Scotland. Having been separated shortly after their marriage by war taking Frank into the army and Claire into service as a nurse, they have been reunited and are enjoying another start to their marriage. On a trip to Scotland to learn more about Frank’s roots, they explore the countryside where they come upon a stone structure high atop a hill in the Highlands called Craigh na Dun. Frank, a professor of history, is fascinated by the stones, as they are often used in worship by pagans of an ancient time. Claire is interested in the foliage growing around the stones, as she enjoys learning about herbs and their medicinal uses. One day, Claire decides to go to the stones atop the hill to look for some plants she spied on an earlier trip, when she is literally sucked into a time warp transporting her back 200 years to a time of warring Highlanders and Englishmen.

She is set upon by Captain Jonathan Randall, the very relative her husband Frank had been researching. She discovers that Randall is not a hero of any kind, but a vicious sadist intent on raping her. As she fights to get away, she is rescued, then kidnapped, by a clan of Scottish men, who whisk her away deep into Scottish territory, at the Mackenzie clan’s Castle Leoch. Along the way, she meets a man who will become very important to her — the outlaw Jamie Fraser, a young, fiery, handsome Scot, who also happens to have been beaten and injured to an inch of his life. Claire calls upon her experience as a nurse and her knowledge of herbs to aid Jamie, and is soon labeled as a physician at Leoch and made invaluable to the inhabitants of the castle.

The chief of the clan, Column Mackenzie and his brother, the war chieftan Dougal Mackenzie, are reluctant to allow her to leave Leoch, not only because she is a healer, but because she is an English woman, and they suspect she is working as a spy for the English or for the French, as she has chosen to identify herself by her Maiden name of Beauchamp, rather than link herself in any way to the terrible Captain Randall. The Mackenzies are determined to find out her true identity, and eventually lead her back to the English to attempt a trade of sorts in order to discover who she is working for and how she came to be in the woods of Craigh na Dun that day they discovered her.

It soon becomes clear when Captain Randall manhandles Claire violently, that she is not working with him. But Captain Randall demands that she be handed over to the English army, as she is an Englishwoman and it is their right to claim her. To avoid handing her back to Randall, the Mackenzies decide they shall make her Scottish, and wed her to Jamie Fraser.  Neither Claire nor Jamie really want to marry, but they can’t deny a strong attraction between them — one that explodes into a passionate love that will change their lives forever.

Claire now has to decide which man she will be faithful to — her husband Frank, whom she left 200 years in the future, or her new husband Jamie. Frank is safe, if a bit dull, but he offers her stability and security in a time of modern conveniences. But Jamie lights her up with a passion she has never felt before, and he fights for her honor and safety at every dangerous turn.

And there is a lot of danger in this time period — the barbarism of the Highland games is no joke. This is a time of ruthless violence. A time of theft and killing at every turn. Claire is afraid for her life, but at the same time, she has never been happier. She is in love and her skills are useful at a time when modern medicine doesn’t exist. This is a time of beauty, untarnished by tar roads and vehicles puffing their fumes into the environment. Even as her protectors and new friends are attacked and beaten, she doesn’t want to leave them. They’ve become her family.

This was a great book. It’s the reason I kept on buying the series. Gabaldon’s writing is rich in details that bring the time and the places to life. There is certainly a lot of filler in the book — historical facts and details that might not be necessary for the storyline, but which help establish an authenticity and feeling that connect the reader to the story. Of course, this is not a book for the squeamish, as there is a lot of detailed and gory violence in it; and this isn’t a book for the prudish, as Gabaldon has no qualms writing sex scenes and plenty of them. I can recall being in a creative writing class once and discussing the difficulties of letting go of your inhibitions and writing a sex scene that will really put you in that moment and almost make your reader feel uncomfortable, like they’ve walked in on a private moment they aren’t supposed to be a part of. It’s not easy to write like that, but I have to say Gabaldon dropped those inhibitions and gave it gusto. You want sex, you got it. But it’s not all sex. At least not the first half or the book, anyway. My husband used to joke the first time I read this book and we’d be reading our books before bedtime, when he’d lean over and look at my pages every few minutes to discover another sex scene or body part being exposed. It was annoying the first couple of times he did it, but after it turned out he was right near the 4th or 5th time, it became funny and we’d make it a sort of game where instead of him looking over to glance over the pages, I’d just call out, “Another one!” and we’d laugh. You could get mighty drunk if you played it as a drinking game ;)

Anyway… enjoyable read. I’ll be starting the next one (again) shortly.