The Fiery Cross - Softcover

Gabaldon, Diana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0712678239 ISBN 13: 9780712678230

Publisher: Century, 2001

Synopsis

The time is 1771 and the colony of North Carolina teeters on an uneasy edge - an internal conflict between the colonial aristocratic rich planters and the struggling pioneers of the backcountry is threatening to explode. Jamie Fraser is a man of worth - respected by all, born of good family and possessed at last of the land he has longed for. But Jamie has a lot to lose. His wife, Claire, is known notoriously as a wisewoman or a witch. As a traveller from the twentieth century she is all these things and more. Her unique view of the oncoming Revolution is both a deliverance and a danger- a torch that may light Jamie's way in the perilous years ahead or the spark that may ignite a conflagration that will leave their lives in ashes. And far more than just their lives hang in the balance. The lives of Jamie's tenants, his daughter Brianna, her husband Roger, his grandson Jemmy, his nephew Ian and his foster son Fergus could all get caught in the blaze. Claire and Jamie know war only as those can who have survived it can. And they will have to use all that knowledge, and more, to follow the path of the fiery cross to battle once more...and try to survive it if they can.

About this title

Review:

To describe Diana Gabaldon's novel The Fiery Cross as epic barely does it justice; this massive successor to the much-acclaimed Drums of Autumn weighs in at nearly a 1,000 pages, and is squarely aimed at those readers who want to enter the world of a book and remain thoroughly immersed for a lengthy period. It's essential that such a book can offer riches: riches in dense, complex plotting, riches in larger-than-life protagonists, riches in sheer story-telling skill. Gabaldon, thankfully, has it all.

After a list of acknowledgments that is long enough to tell us that this is an author who takes her time, we are plunged into the Colony of North Carolina in the year 1771, with a volatile society not under threat from Britain so much as from a bitter internal conflict. The divisions are between the colonial aristocracy, secure in their wealth, and the disadvantaged pioneers, carving out a rugged living in the shadow of the mountains of the west. Caught between them is Jamie Fraser of Fraser's Ridge, who is at ease with both sides. But Jamie's wife is the beautiful Claire, unable to integrate in the manner of her husband, always out of place. Her ability to discern the future warns of the pending revolution, and in the bloodshed that follows, the love of Jamie and Claire will be tested in the forge of war.

Gabaldon's canvas frequently evokes the epoch-spanning South of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, but Gabaldon is very much her own woman: this is romantic writing, but tempered with a steel edge that makes for an exuberant, turbulent blockbusting read.--Barry Forshaw

Review:

This is romantic writing, but tempered with a steel edge that makes for an exuberant, turbulent blockbusting read. -- Barry Forshaw, Amazon

About this edition

• Publisher: Century
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0712678239
• ISBN 13: 9780712678230
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 992