An Echo in the Bone
2009
- fiction
- jamie fraser (fictitious character)
- scottish americans
- claire randall (fictitious character)
- time travel
- history
- fiction, historical
- scotland, fiction
- fraser, jamie (fictitious character), fiction
- fiction, romance, time travel
The story
Diana Gabaldon's brilliant storytelling has captivated millions of readers in her bestselling and award-winning Outlander saga. Now, in An Echo in the Bone, the enormously anticipated seventh volume, Gabaldon continues the extraordinary story of the eighteenth-century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his twentieth-century time-traveling wife, Claire Randall.Jamie Fraser, former Jacobite and reluctant rebel, is already certain of three things about the American rebellion: The Americans will win, fighting on the side of victory is no guarantee of survival, and he'd rather die than have to face his illegitimate son--a young lieutenant in the British army--across the barrel of a gun.Claire Randall knows that the Americans will win, too, but not what the ultimate price may be. That price won't include Jamie's life or his happiness, though--not if she has anything to say about it.Meanwhile, in the relative safety of the twentieth century, Jamie and Claire's daughter, Brianna, and her husband, Roger MacKenzie, have resettled in a historic Scottish home where, across a chasm of two centuries, the unfolding drama of Brianna's parents' story comes to life through Claire's letters. The fragile pages reveal Claire's love for battle-scarred Jamie Fraser and their flight from North Carolina to the high seas, where they encounter privateers and ocean battles--as Brianna and Roger search for clues not only to Claire's fate but to their own. Because the future of the MacKenzie family in the Highlands is mysteriously, irrevocably, and intimately entwined with life and death in war-torn colonial America.With stunning cameos of historical characters from Benedict Arnold to Benjamin Franklin, An Echo in the Bone is a soaring masterpiece of imagination, insight, character, and adventure--a novel that echoes in the mind long after the last page is turned.From the Hardcover edition.
What it’s like
Warm, candlelit interiors and wind-driven coastlines, with the American Revolution's sea and field settings rendered through close, sensory detail: wool and tallow, salt air, the creak of ship timbers, gunsmoke drifting over hedgerows. Gabaldon's prose is conversational and lush, a voice that lingers on domestic routine, meals, weather, and the physical toll of travel, so the page feels thick with texture rather than spare. The sensibility is a blend of cozy and bruised: a warm, lived-in melancholy broken by sudden flashes of battle and danger. It suits a long rainy weekend, a comfort reread, or a slow evening with a cup of tea. Pacing is leisurely and digressive, with frequent switches between timelines and perspectives, and the emotional core is a long-married couple's tenderness under strain, a mother's worry for her children, and a son and father pulled toward opposite sides of a war. Violence is present and sometimes graphic, including battle wounds, executions, and gunfire at sea, and there are sexual scenes that are explicit. Not gentle, though it is rarely cruel for its own sake. Written for readers who love historical sweep, time-travel romance, and characters they can settle into for many hundreds of pages.
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