Woman, Be Happier!

Outlander (U.S. title, also published as Cross-Stitch in the U.K.), has stayed firmly at the top of my list of favorite books of all time for the last several years. Actually, I include Gabaldon’s entire Outlander series in that category, but if you have never yet had the pleasure of losing yourself in these books, you absolutely must start with the first one and read them in order.

If you have somehow escaped the addictive magnetic pull of these books so far, you are in for an enormous treat. I wish I could unread them just to have the joy of discovering them again for the first time.

This time travel-romance-adventure-historical fiction saga defies genre categorization. There is something in it for everyone, and I only have one word of caution: Do not start reading Outlander if you have anything else planned for the next several weeks. You will find yourself helplessly sucked into a fascinating world of swashbuckling Scottish highlanders who find themselves equally caught up in the inevitability of an impending war. You will see it through the eyes of Claire, a 20th century time traveler, as she meets the almost-too-good-to-be-true Jamie Fraser, with whom she eventually falls in love. The characters are so vividly drawn that you will begin to think of them as if they were people you know. I sometimes get the feeling that I would recognize them if I met them on the street.

The series has inspired legions of loyal fans, including the Ladies of Lallybroch, who have their own website. (Lallybroch is the name of Jamie Fraser’s ancestral home.)

So What, Exactly, Is the Story About?

English Claire and her husband Frank are having a second honeymoon in Scotland to reconnect after six years apart during World War II, while they each served their county in the war. One day Claire visits an ancient stone circle by herself, walks through the cleft between the two large stones in the center, and Something Happens.

When she comes to her senses, she is in the middle of a battle involving British redcoats and kilted Scotsmen, fighting with swords on horseback. At first she concludes that she has somehow wandered onto a movie set. She is kidnapped by an evil Englishman, who takes her for a spy, then rescued by the Scots, who are equally suspicious of her, and considerable time goes by before she realizes and accepts the truth that she is, in fact, about two hundred years in the past. If you keep reading until you reach that point in about the third chapter, you will never look back.

Is There a Happy Ending, Or Not?

Shhh, that would be telling. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I wouldn’t steer you to a book that would let you down, would I? You can reassure yourself with the knowledge that our beloved Jamie and Claire are somehow still alive and kicking in the most recently published sixth book in the series, An Echo in the Bone: A Novel (Outlander)

Diana Gabaldon is amazingly talented in several striking ways. She tells every scene the way a traditional oral storyteller might tell a complete story. She never drops a loose end, even if she has to pick it up several books later. Her descriptions are so detailed that you can smell the surroundings as well as envision them. Her characters seem real enough to leap off the page. And she has an uncanny way of making the reader believe that the most implausible happenings are the only logical outcome of everything that has led up to that point.

Please comment, whether you love these books already or have just discovered them. Just be kind to new readers, and don’t give away too much of the story.

Entire Outlander Series in order on Amazon.com, 6 books so far