The basic premise is that the protagonist, Claire, accidentally walks through a gap in time from Scotland in the 1940s to the 1740s. In doing so, she leaves behind her husband, Frank. As you can imagine, her modern(ish) clothing and attitude does cause some significant clashes and problems while she is there- most notably, she was thought by the first locals that she encountered to be a prostitute, because of her knee-length thin cotton dress. Although at first she wants nothing more than to escape back to her own time, she begins to settle in and make a life in her new world. She had been a nurse during World War II, and her medical knowledge proves to be very useful in making a name for herself as a healer. She also ends up forced to marry again, a handsome Scotsman named Jamie.
One thing that I found really interesting was that the author never actually intended to write the first book for publication. She started writing the novel as a practice exercise, and it pretty much took on a life of its own, and started a whole series!
I don’t want to tell you much more about the series, because I’m afraid I’ll give something important away and spoil the books. They’re incredibly good, though. I’ve been checking them out from the library on my Nook, because they’re kind of long and I’d really rather not have to tote them around. The problem, however, is that I can only borrow a book from the library for two weeks (and I can’t renew because there is a waiting list). Each of these books seems to get successively longer. The Drums of Autumn, which I downloaded on Wednesday, is 1,050 pages long. I think (hope?) I can manage to finish it in the allotted time, but I’m concerned what will happen when I get to the end of the series, if they books continue to grow in length!
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