Quicklets: Your Reading Sidekick!
This Hyperink Quicklet includes an overall summary, chapter commentary, key characters, literary themes, fun trivia, and recommended related readings.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Voyager, the third book in Diana Gabaldons phenomenal Outlander series, is significant in a number of ways. Outlander, introduces us to Claire Beauchamp, an English ex-army combat nurse celebrating the end of the Second World War. This first book catapults the young nurse, enjoying a second honeymoon with long-absent husband and historian Frank Randall in Inverness, back in time through standing stones into the Scottish Highlands of 1743.
There she meets Jamie Fraser Scottish laird, warrior, and outlaw falls in love, and (since she cant seem to return to her own time) marries him to escape the clutches of the notorious English officer, Black Jack Randall. Many adventures follow, and the second book, Dragonfly in Amber, leaves readers holding their collective breath as Jamie faces certain death in the battle of Culloden, while Claire, now pregnant, plunges back through the stones into the 20th century. Clearly something had to be written to resolve this dilemma thus the next book was born.
According to Gabaldon, it takes about three years to complete one of these books, which require a great deal of research. She does not write consecutively. Her method is more spontaneous, and perhaps more effective. It seems Gabaldon is correct in stating that a writers interaction with her characters often occurs not consecutively, but in vignettes rather like life.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Valentine McKay-Riddell was born a Navy brat in Orlando, Florida and grew up in Canada and Texas. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Valentine is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, where she earned a Masters in Counseling Psychology and a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology.
EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK
In Ardsmuir Prison, Jamie becomes acquainted with its new young governor the very John Grey whose life he spared before the battle of Prestonpans and whose brother Harold Grey, Lord Melton, repays that debt of honor by sparing Jamies life at Culloden. Lord John falls in love with Jamie but, bitterly remembering Black Jack Randalls abuse of him in Wentworth Prison, Jamie rejects him. They maintain a cool relationship, interacting only to discuss the health and wellbeing of Jamies fellow inmates. When the English King pardons the Scots prisoners, all are deported to the American colonies. Grey sends Jamie to Helwater, a Lake Country horse farm owned by the Dunsanys, friends of Greys family, to serve as a groom named Alex MacKenzie. It is a less harsh sentence than deportation and Jamie is grateful until Geneva Dunsany, his employers headstrong daughter who is betrothed to a man much older than herself, decides that he is the only man to whom she will relinquish her virginity.
She overrides his shocked refusal with a threat to expose his sisters family, and they have one night together, resulting in the death of the young woman at the birth of Jamies son, William ostensibly the child of the Earl of Ellesmere, whom Jamie shoots when the Earl, convinced that his young wife has been unfaithful, tries to throw the infant out of the window. The Dunsanys choose to overlook this unfortunate incident and Jamie remains at Helwater. After several years, during which William begins to resemble Jamie sufficiently enough to embarrass the family, Lord John facilitates the Kings pardon for him, tells him that he knows Jamie is Williams real father, and promises to look after him as Jamie is sent back to Lallybroch...
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CHAPTER OUTLINE
- Quicklet On Diana Gabaldon, Davina Porter's Voyager
- ...and much more