Voyager by Diana Gabaldon

          Outlander #3

          Another great book by Diana Gabaldon!  I am so pleased I found this series. I’ve enjoyed every moment of these very long books. Gabaldon has made her way onto my list of favorite authors.

          Voyager is the third book in the Outlander series. After thoroughly enjoying the first two, Outlander and Dragonfly In Amber, [Outlander, Dragonfly In Amber] I was looking forward to this one. In the first book, Claire travels two hundred years back through time and finds herself in Scotland just prior to the Jacobite uprising. While there, she meets, marries and falls in love with Jamie Frasier, a large, handsome charismatic Scot. She tells him that the Scottish forces will be massacred at Culloden Field, and as the battle approaches, she discovers she is pregnant. Jamie sends her back through time on the eve of the battle, intending to go back and die on the field. Claire returns to her own time and bears Jamie’s child.

          In the second book, Claire takes her daughter, Brianna, on a trip to Scotland with the intent of telling her who her biological father is, and attempting to explain the time travel. Claire tells the tale of her love affair with Jamie and of their adventures together. While there, Brianna discovers Jamie Frasier’s grave and Claire realizes for the first time that Jamie did not die at Culloden.

          Now, Claire works to discover where she might find Jamie Frasier twenty years after the battle of Culloden. Through the exhaustive efforts of Brianna and her historian boyfriend, they track down clues that indicate Jamie is working as a printer in Edinburgh.

          Claire gathers what she can and prepares to travel back through the stones to find her one true love. It is wrenching to leave Brianna, but she cannot stay away. She goes back through the stone and begins the trek to the city.

          Upon arriving in Edinburgh, Claire gets directions to the printing house she believes is now owned by Jamie. She sees him and knows she was right to return to him, but is nervous about his reaction.  When he turns around and sees her, he faints dead away! 

          Jamie and Claire then embark on the journey of relearning each other – neither is really the same person they were when they parted twenty years earlier. Their personal journey is paralleled in the book by their physical journey from Scotland to the New World.  It is fun and exciting with twists and turns in both treks that kept me on the edge of my seat. 

          I highly recommend this book.  I would also suggest reading the first two before picking this one up though.