Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone Synopsis
The author of the Sunday Times bestselling Outlander series returns with the newest novel in the epic tale.
Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising of 1745, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same.
It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser's Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible.
Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell's tea-kettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his own tenants are split and the war is on his doorstep. It's only a matter of time before the shooting starts.
Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father's identity - and thus his own. Lord John Grey also has reconciliations to make and dangers to meet . . . on his son's behalf, and his own.
Meanwhile, the Southern Colonies blaze, and the Revolution creeps ever closer to Fraser's Ridge. And Claire, the physician, wonders how much of the blood to be spilt will belong to those she loves.
About This Edition
Diana Gabaldon Press Reviews
'Go Tell the Bees is packed with everything readers love about the Outlander series' Guardian
'Gabaldon is a gifted world-builder, and her attention to the unglamorous details of life in the past, like digging privies, plus authentic portraits of marriage and relationships lift her series' Daily Telegraph
About Diana Gabaldon
Diana Gabaldon is the internationally bestselling author of many historical novels including CROSS STITCH, DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, VOYAGER, DRUMS OF AUTUMN, THE FIERY CROSS and A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES. She lives with her family in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Photo © Nancy Castaldo
Diana Gabaldon on her influences...
I know writers of novels who say they don't read fiction at all while working on a book, out of fear of "being influenced" by what they read. I am struck by horror at the thought of going years without being able to read fiction (though perhaps these people write faster than I do, and take long vacations between books?)—but more struck by the sheer silliness of this.
Everything writers see, think, and experience influences their work. How could it not? Now, it's true that people do ask writers, "Where do you get your ideas?" and that writers--out of facetiousness or desperation--give answers like, "From the Sears catalog" (or "From Ideas.com," depending on the writer's vintage). But the truth is that writers get ideas from every damn thing they see, hear, smell, touch, taste, think, feel, or do—including the books they read.
Naturally, one wants to develop a unique voice, but do kids learn to talk without ever being talked to? You have an individual voice, by virtue of being an individual. And your individuality is composed of your essential God-given spark of personality and of the sum total of the things you encounter in life. Now, whether each encounter is a bruising collision or a fruitful act of love…who knows? But all of it is grist to a writer's mill; so much should be obvious, if one reads at all widely.
Personally, I learned to read at the age of three, and have read non-stop ever since. I'll be 58 next week; you can read a lot of books in fifty-five years. I'm sure that every single book I've ever read has had some influence on me as a writer, whether negative (I've read a lot of books with the mounting conviction that I would never in my life do something like that) or positive.
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