Drums of Autumn is the fourth book in the Outlander series, written by Diana Gabaldon. The stories center around a time-travelling 20th century doctor (Claire Fraser) and her 18th century Scottish husband (Jamie Fraser), and are located in Scotland, France, and America.
The heroine of the bestselling Outlander, Claire, returns in Drums of Autumn, reunited with her husband Jamie Fraser and facing a new life in the American colonies. As the preceding novel, Voyager, concluded with Jamie Fraser and his wife Claire shipwrecked on the Georgia coastline—and happy to be out of Scotland—Drums of Autumn picks up where Voyager left off. Brianna Ellen Randall and her suitor, historian Roger Wakefield, remain safely ensconced in the 20th century. Now orphaned by her mother's departure to the past, Brianna struggles to accept her loss and satisfy her curiosity about a father she has never met, only to discover a tragic piece of "history" that threatens her parents' happiness in the past. This discovery sends Brianna back through time on a mission to save her parents and sends Roger after her.
Famous quotes containing the words drums and/or autumn:
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring autumn days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves like migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year, when the air is but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the trampling of the crowd.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)