In 1945, a former combat nurse, back from the war and on her honeymoon, touches a boulder in an ancient Scottish ruin and is instantly transported to a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in 1743.

For twenty years Claire Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown daughter to Scotland's majestic mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones, about a love that transcends the boundaries of time, and about James Fraser, a Scottish warrior whose gallantry once drew a young Claire from the security of her century...