As battle-scarred Jamie Fraser and his twentieth-century time-traveling wife Claire Randall flee from North Carolina to the high seas during the American Revolution, they encounter privateers and ocean battles. Meanwhile in the relative safety of the 20th century Brianna (Claire and Jamie's daughter) and Roger MacKenzie, Brianna's husband, search for clues not only to Claire's fate -- but to their own fate in the Highlands.

How can love and anguish live in the same heart? Time traveler Claire Randall, of the 20th century, loves Jamie Fraser, of the 18th. The year is 1771. Claire knows that war is coming to Scotland. Jamie knows she tells the truth. Jamie Fraser stands in the shadow of the fiery cross--a standard that leads nowhere but to the bloody brink of war.

For twenty years Claire Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown daughter to Scotland's majestic mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones, about a love that transcends the boundaries of time, and about James Fraser, a Scottish warrior whose gallantry once drew a young Claire from the security of her century...

Now that Claire knows Jamie survived the slaughter at Culloden, she is faced with the most difficult decision of her life. She aches to travel back through time again to find the love of her life, but, in order to do that, she must leave their daughter behind. It has been 20 years since she and Jamie were forced to separate. Can she risk everything, maybe even her life, on a gamble that their love has withstood the long, rigorous test of time?

Twice Claire has used an ancient stone circle to travel back to the 18th century. The first time she found love with a Scottish warrior, but had to return to the 1940s to save their unborn child. The second time, twenty years later, she reunited with her lost love, but had to leave behind the daughter that he would never see. Now Brianna, from her 1960s vantage point, has found a disturbing obituary and will risk everything in an attempt to change...