Roger and Brianna go to Christmas Eve mass together, drawing attention from the town because Roger was raised by a Presbyterian minister. On their walk back home, Roger proposes marriage to Brianna, but he immediately sees that she did not want him to ask her. Bree admits that she still wants Roger, but doesn’t want to marry him, which offends him as he wants more than just to have sex with her. Brianna knows that, when she marries someone, she wants it to last, so she wants to be certain of her love for him first. She remembers her mother and how she fell in love with two men, and Bree doesn’t want to break the bonds of her first marriage like Claire did when she fell in love with Jamie.

Bree also has another year of school before she can move to the UK to be with Roger, and doesn’t know what will happen in the meantime. When Roger hears this, he promises to wait for Bree, but wants to have her as his wife or not at all. He gives her a silver bracelet as a Christmas present and professes his love for her.

Rather than returning to River Run once they meet up with Ian and Myers, Jamie and Claire decide to stay in the mountains and build a small cabin where they can stay for the winter. Though Claire is afraid of the desolation and distance of the land, she thinks it would be a good idea to get away from people like Murchison, Campbell, and even Jocasta for a time.

They send Myers to get Duncan and supplies while Claire, Jamie, Ian, and Rollo stay on the ridge. They build a few small sheds before the cabin, but Jamie talks about building a grander house when they can. Jamie plans to write to the governor, and once Duncan arrives he discusses setting him up as his land agent and giving him his own land.

Jamie asks Duncan to find other prisoners from Ardsmuir to populate the land, and also asks him to take care of the navy for Jocasta. Following an old Scottish tradition, Jocasta gives the group a piece of iron to bless their new home, which symbolizes her approval of their venture.

As Jamie, Claire, and Ian work on the cabin, Nacognaweto—the eldest of the three Tuscarora men Claire and Jamie met, who has since befriended Jamie—arrives with three women. Claire is introduced to Nacognaweto’s wife, Gabrielle, her daughter, Berthe, and his grandmother, Nayawenne. Gabrielle is French, so she can communicate with Claire. Claire learns that Nayawenne is a shaman and would be happy to show Claire some of the local medicinal plants. Nayawenne had a dream about Claire before Nacognaweto met her, where Claire turned into a white raven who had magical healing powers and who led them to a magical sapphire in real life. Gabrielle conveys more mysterious messages to Claire from Nayawenne, leading her to believe that sickness is coming.

Jamie, Ian, and Claire finish working on the cabin as winter arrives, but their modest existence is hard. Jamie and Ian often visit Anna Ooka, the Tuscarora village. When Claire and Jamie are alone, they often speak of Brianna. Jamie wonders if she will look for them in history and believes she will, but Claire hopes Bree lives her own life rather than focusing on theirs.

One day, Jamie goes out, and Claire is left alone and worries for him when he doesn’t come home by nightfall. Worrying that he is hurt, Claire goes out to look for Jamie, following his footprints until she gets lost. When she slips on a patch of ice and nearly falls off a small cliff, she sees Jamie crumpled on the ground after throwing his back out. Claire tries to get him to move so he doesn’t suffer hypothermia, and he instructs her on how to build a small shelter from the snow. They try to stay awake until the morning comes, and Claire tells Jamie the story of A Christmas Carol to keep him from falling asleep and freezing. She remembers a time when she, Frank, and Brianna got stranded in a car one winter, and did the same thing.

When Claire wakes up some time before dawn, she hears a group of Indigenous men speaking, but doesn’t think they are Tuscarora. Though the Indigenous men are armed, they see a Jesuit man with them, and Claire thinks that will keep them safe, but Jamie is still hesitant to call out to them. They make a plan for Claire to go back to the cabin and get provisions for a few days once the men have left, but Claire refuses to leave him alone for days and plans to bring back firewood and other supplies.

Before she can leave, Ian and a few of his Tuscarora friends arrive. They find an elk Jamie shot and help to bring Jamie home. Ian tells them that the Indigenous men they saw earlier were from the Mohawk tribe who were converted to Christianity and who have come south in search of brides.

Once everyone is back at the cabin, they celebrate Christmas together by the fire. Jamie tells Claire that he dreamt of Brianna and saw a birthmark that Claire had never described to him.

While doing unrelated research, Roger stumbles upon an old newspaper that announces the death of Jamie and Claire Fraser on January 21, 1776. The paper says that they died when their house in Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina, caught fire, and left no surviving children.

Though Roger is happy with the confirmation that Claire found Jamie and got to spend a few more years with him, he feels great grief at the loss of the couple, and debates whether or not to tell Bree before she stumbles upon the newspaper herself. Though Roger knows that the past cannot be changed based on what Claire has told him, he worries that Brianna wouldn’t agree with him and would try to time-travel to change her parents’ fate. Roger decides not to tell Bree what he knows and to slowly suggest she give up her research.

The novel’s perspective returns to the spring of 1768, when Duncan has returned to Jamie’s settlement with several other people. Claire tends to the medical needs of the small settlement, often seeking Nayawenne’s expertise, while Jamie and others start to tend the land.

In August, Claire treks home through a great storm after helping deliver a baby for a family a few miles away. When lightning strikes nearby, her horse is scared and throws Claire over a precipice. She seeks shelter under a tree because she knows no one will be able to look for her. She sleeps fitfully, dreaming of childbirth and holding a bloody knife, before she wakes to the smell of smoke from a nearby tree that caught fire when struck by lightning.

Claire comes across a human skull under a tree, cleanly severed from the rest of its skeleton, and decides to dig for the rest of the body, as she will have to wait until morning to travel regardless. She recites poetry to the skull to feel company before she sees someone with a torch coming toward her. A naked man approaches her, and she speaks to him, but he silently walks away as Claire wonders if the figure was a human or ghost.

Claire falls asleep again and continues to have cryptic dreams before she is awoken by Rollo, who has come with Jamie and Ian. Ian finds the skull, and Jamie questions Claire’s sanity as she calls it a good conversationalist. Claire explains how she got there as Jamie and Ian explain how Rollo began howling and led them to Claire’s shoes, which somehow made it to the cabin after she lost them at the tree. Rollo led them to her, and Claire is more confused than ever about what happened to her last night.

They take the skull with them, as well as a piece of carved opal Claire found buried with him, which Jamie believes is unlucky. When they return to their cabin at Fraser’s Ridge, Claire sees that there is a fire burning and warns Jamie about putting it out so the house doesn’t catch fire. Jamie gives Claire a bath to warm her up when they get inside, and scolds her for traveling in the storm.

Around 20 settlers have recently arrived at Fraser’s Ridge, including Fergus, Marsali, and their new baby, Germaine. The baby makes Claire think of Brianna, and though she misses her, Claire is still glad that Bree is safe in the 20th century. Claire examines the skull she brought with her, and is chilled to see that its teeth have silver fillings—a modern invention. When she tells Jamie this, he suspects that the man was a time-traveler, and that there must be another stone circle like Craigh na Dun nearby.

Roger gets a letter from Bree, who plans to come to England in four months, and worries about how the secret he is keeping from her will impact their relationship.

Claire comes across a rattlesnake in the privy, where Jamie hits it with a rock before it falls in. Claire is treating a Tuscarora man who has measles and pneumonia when she hears someone scream nearby and finds a boy covered in leeches. Though Claire doesn’t recognize the boy, she recognizes his eyes, which are identical to Jamie’s. She recognizes the boy as William, Jamie’s secret son, whom he had entrusted to his good friend, Lord John Gray. Claire wonders why John came here, and what Jamie will do when he sees William. Though William is not entirely recognizable as Jamie’s son, Claire sees some of Bree’s features in him.

When they get to the cabin, John tells them that his wife died and left William a large plantation in Virginia. While the adults were talking, William and Ian went to see the snake, and Willie had fallen into the privy, and they had to pull him out.

After Claire goes to tend to her Tuscarora patient, John tells her about a measles outbreak nearby. John speaks to Jamie about the lack of political turmoil in the remote backwoods of North Carolina, unlike that which he faced as the governor of Jamaica. They speak of a group called the Regulators, who roam the backroads and try to enforce the Crown’s law.

As Claire listens to the two men walk, she feels jealous of John, who was also in love with Jamie. She also feels the unfairness of the fact that Jamie will never see Brianna, though he can see his son. Ian wakes her the next morning to tell her that her measles patient isn’t well, and Ian tells Claire what the Tuscarora do to prepare for death.

After the man dies, they debate what to do with the infectious body, and they worry about what the man’s tribe will think. While they are considering this, Willie comes in to tell them that John is ill, and Claire believes that he has measles, too. Claire fears that William, too, is infected, so Claire and Jamie make plans to keep everyone quarantined while they wait to see if the measles has spread to anyone else.

Jamie takes William away to Anna Ooka for a few days so as not to catch John’s measles, but the boy fights with him, wanting to stay with his stepfather. Jamie spent the first few years of Willie’s childhood as the groom for William’s noble family, but the boy doesn’t recognize Jamie, and John has told him that Jamie was a friend from the war. Jamie worries about what will happen to the boy if John dies, especially as John is the only person other than Claire who knows William’s true parentage, and his only link to his son would be broken.

When they set up camp at night, Jamie can hear Willie crying softly, and worries that he has caught the measles. Jamie sees the boy’s grief after losing two mothers and, now, possibly his stepfather, and he sympathizes as he too lost his parents. Jamie brews Willie a tea from herbs that Claire gave him, and Willie falls asleep against Jamie shortly after. They go trout fishing the next day, and Jamie sees several similarities between himself and his son.

Claire diagnoses Ian with the measles and takes him to the sick room with John. John and Claire discuss a murder that occurred when they last saw one another, and Claire gives him the details behind it that he did not know about Geillis Duncan, another time-traveler who had kidnapped Ian and killed others. Claire still feels uneasy about John, but knows her thoughts are unkind after what he has gone through. John and Claire have a frank conversation about their jealousies toward one another. John admits that he came to see Jamie to see if he could still feel, as he did not feel anything at his wife’s death, and he says that he still has feelings for Jamie.

The next day, Claire receives a visitor, Pastor Gottfried, a German Lutheran minister from a town a two-day ride away. John, who speaks German, translates for the pastor that the woman whose baby Claire recently delivered is dead from the measles, as is the baby, and the pastor wants Jamie to reason with Gerhard Mueller, the husband.

Mueller was visited by Indigenous men the day before the measles reached their household, and thinks the illness is their doing because they seemed to hex him when he treated them unkindly. He has already scalped two Indigenous men in revenge, and is now coming to seek revenge on Claire, whom he also believes may have something to do with the deaths. Claire fears the onslaught of fighting that will occur when various people try to seek revenge, especially as Fraser’s Ridge lies between the Muellers’ village and the Indigenous settlements. Claire tells John about Mueller, a determined man, and he tries to soothe her worries.

Mueller reaches the cabin later that day, but only begins to cry when he tells Claire about what happened. He has brought Claire a charm to keep her safe from the curse he believes the Indigenous people put on him, and she is stunned to see it is a grey-haired scalp, which she recognizes to be that of Nayawenne.

Jamie senses something is wrong as they approach Anna Ooka, and gives William instructions to go to a nearby waterfall if he does not come back by dark. The town has been set on fire, and Jamie sees little human life. When he runs into Ian’s friend, Onakara, the man takes him to where a group of survivors are gathered, who look as if they have been through war.

Jamie finds Nacognaweto, who tells them that measles decimated their village. Nayawenne, Gabrielle, and Berthe have gone in search of a charm, but none of the women have been seen since. The tribe has burned the bodies of the dead in their houses and is preparing to move north, believing that they are cursed.