Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

Content Warning: The source material discusses sexual assault and violence against women, and it contains historically inaccurate depictions of Indigenous Americans.

Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone is the ninth novel in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, which follows Claire and Jamie Fraser and their family and friends. For maximum comprehension, it is important to note key details from the past eight novels.

Claire is an accidental time traveler who, in the first book, Outlander, finds herself in 1743. She marries Jamie. Claire falls in love with Jamie and decides to stay. Jamie is tortured by Jonathan Randall after being arrested and imprisoned; Claire rescues him, and they flee to France.

In Firefly in Amber, Jamie and Claire attempt to stop the Jacobite uprising, but this fails. On the eve of the Battle of Culloden, Jamie, believing he will die in battle, sends a pregnant Claire back to the future because he wants to prevent her from having a second stillbirth. The third novel, Voyager, brings Jamie and Claire back together after 20 years. Claire kills her nemesis, Geillis Duncan, before she and Jamie are shipwrecked off the coast of Georgia.

Drums of Autumn reunites Claire with her daughter, Brianna. Brianna comes to the past with her partner, Roger, to warn her parents of a deadly house fire on Fraser’s Ridge. Unfortunately, Brianna is sexually assaulted by Stephen Bonnet, and Jamie mistakenly thinks Roger did it. Jamie beats Roger and sells him to the Mohawks as Brianna gives birth to a son. Later, Jamie rescues Roger, but then young Ian, Jamie’s nephew, joins the Mohawk tribe.

In A Breath of Snow, Jamie struggles to continue being faithful to his vow of loyalty to the king, finally breaking it after Claire is kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Jamie raises a militia to fight the loyalists at the Battle of Moore’s Creek while Stephen Bonnet continues to harass Brianna. An Echo in the Bone finds Brianna in 1980, where her son is kidnapped by a man named Rob Cameron. In the past, Claire and Jamie return to Scotland but are separated when Claire returns to the colonies to care for their grandson, Henri-Christian. Jamie is reported lost at sea, and Claire marries Lord John Grey. William Ransom learns he is Jamie’s biological son.

Written in My Own Heart’s Blood finds Jamie alive and angry to learn Claire is married to John Grey. Claire is injured during the Battle of Monmouth, and Jamie resigns his commission to the Continental Army to be with her. Henri-Christian is killed in a fire at Fergus’s print shop, and Roger goes back in time to find Jem, only to arrive in the wrong time. Brianna finds Roger, and the family returns to Claire and Jamie in 1779.