War leaves nobody alone. Neither the past, the present, nor the future offers true safety, and the only refuge is what you can protect: your family, your friends, your home. Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years of loss and heartbreak to find each other again. Now its 1779, and Claire and Jamie are finally reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children, and are rebuilding their home on Frasers Ridgea fortress that may shelter them against the winds of war as well as weather. But tensions in the Colonies are great: Battles rage from New York to Georgia and, even in the mountains of the backcountry, feelings run hot enough to boil Hells teakettle. Jamie knows that loyalties among his tenants are split and it wont be long before the war is on his doorstep. Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700samong them disease, starvation, and an impending warwas indeed the safer choice for their family. Not so far away, young William Ransom is coming to terms with the mysteries of his identity, his future, and the family hes never known. His erstwhile father, Lord John Grey, has reconciliations to make and dangers to meet on his sons behalf and on his own, and far to the north, Young Ian Murray fights his own battle between past and future, and the two women hes loved. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Frasers Ridge. Jamie sharpens his sword, while Claire whets her surgeons blade: It is a time for steel.