In the wake of a devastating fire in the mountains of North Carolina, Highlander Jamie Fraser and his English wife find themselves homeless and without family in the midst of the gathering storm of revolution. And thanks to his time-travelling wife's information, he knows what the coming spring of 1778 will bring.

But then Jamie's illegitimate son, William, arrives in North Carolina, a young officer in King George's army. Jamie has sworn two things to himself: his son will never know his true paternity - and he himself will never face his son across the barrel of a gun.

Between the mountains of North Carolina and those of the Scottish highlands lie blockades and battlefields, storm and shipwreck, privateers and politics. The one thing that sustains the Frasers in their struggle is the hope that their family has reached safety in the future.

They have. The Frasers' daughter and her family have returned safely through the standing stones that guard the passage through time, and to Scotland. But something mysterious looms over their new home. Something whose secret may draw them back to what they fled from...