Dragonfly in Amber

by Diana Gabaldon Book 2 in the Outlander series.

First published 1992

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4.6(59,458)

Claire returns to Scotland in 1968 to tell her daughter the truth about Jamie Fraser and the life she lived in the eighteenth century. Her account follows Claire and Jamie through the French court and into the Jacobite rising, where they attempt to prevent Charles Edward Stuart’s campaign because Claire knows it will end at Culloden. Political intrigue, divided loyalties and personal loss carry them towards the battle they cannot ultimately stop.

Claire’s knowledge of Culloden creates a moral problem rather than an easy advantage. She and Jamie can recognise the likely end of the Jacobite enterprise but cannot control the ambitions, loyalties and accidents that drive it forward. The novel uses that tension to show historical inevitability from the viewpoint of people still making choices inside events whose outcome one of them already knows.