An Echo in the Bone characters

Also known as Claire Beauchamp Randall

Appears from the start

A twentieth-century surgeon living in the eighteenth by choice, wife to James Fraser. With their North Carolina house burned and the colonies in open revolt, she is on the move: practising medicine out of a saddlebag, arguing with army doctors about cleanliness, and carrying knowledge of how this war ends that she can share with almost nobody. Blunt, competent and increasingly aware that being useful to an army means being where the fighting is.

Also known as Jamie, Colonel Fraser

Appears from the start

A Highland Scot in his fifties who has already lost one rebellion and has now committed himself to another. Formerly laird of Fraser's Ridge, he has left the burned settlement behind and means to reach Scotland on family business before the war closes the sea lanes. He is a soldier by long habit, a Catholic among Presbyterians and a rebel among former friends, and he has a son in the British army who does not know whose son he is.

Appears from the start

Jamie's Scottish nephew, who lived for years as a Mohawk and now travels with his uncle and aunt as scout, hunter and interpreter, with his wolf-dog Rollo at his heel. He is caught between three peoples and belongs cleanly to none of them, and he believes, on the evidence of his marriage among the Mohawk, that he cannot father a living child.

Appears from the start

Jamie and Claire's daughter, an engineer, living in the twentieth century at Lallybroch, the Fraser family's old Highland farmhouse, with her husband Roger and their two children. She brought her daughter back through the stones for heart surgery and has no intention of risking the crossing again. She reads the letters her parents left for her across two hundred years and works at a hydroelectric station in the glen.

Appears from the start

Historian, former minister-in-training, husband to Brianna, living at Lallybroch in the twentieth century. His singing voice was ruined by a hanging in the past and he is still finding out what he is for without it. He is teaching his son to be careful about what he says at school, digging through parish records for traces of the people he left behind, and trying to work out how far ahead the family's history is already written.

Also known as William Ransom, Ellesmere

First appears in chapter 6

A young English nobleman, ninth Earl of Ellesmere, raised by Lord John Grey and now a lieutenant in the British army in America. Tall, capable and eager to prove himself, he is assigned to carry dispatches and gather intelligence rather than to the line duty he wants. He believes his father died before he was born and has never questioned it.

Also known as John Grey

First appears in chapter 7

An English aristocrat and former army officer, William's stepfather and guardian, and Jamie Fraser's oldest friend on the other side of this war. He moves easily among soldiers, diplomats and intelligence men, has interests in both Britain and America, and is trying to keep his family out of a conflict that has already taken a piece of it.

First appears in chapter 8

Jamie's foster son, now running a printing press with his wife Marsali in Philadelphia, where a printer with rebel sympathies and a French accent must be careful about what he sets in type and for whom.

First appears in chapter 8

Fergus's wife and Jamie's stepdaughter, keeping a household of small children and a print shop going in a city that changes hands as the armies move. Practical, sharp and unimpressed by danger she cannot do anything about.

First appears in chapter 27

A man Roger and Brianna meet in the glen, a local with an interest in Gaelic and in old stories, who works around the hydroelectric scheme and takes an unusual interest in the family at Lallybroch.

First appears in chapter 38

A young Quaker woman travelling with her brother, plain-spoken in the Friends' manner and entirely unimpressed by rank or uniform. Her convictions and her circumstances are pulling in opposite directions: her brother has decided that the testimony of peace does not forbid him to heal soldiers, and she has to decide what she will do about it.

Also known as Denny

First appears in chapter 38

A Quaker physician, trained in Scotland, who believes he is called to serve as a surgeon with the Continental army even though his Meeting will disown him for it. Mild, precise and unshakeable once he has decided a thing is right.

First appears in chapter 48

Lord John's nephew, a young British officer taken prisoner and left in Philadelphia gravely wounded, with musket balls still in his body and no surgeon willing to attempt them. His family has been searching for him.

Also known as Dottie

First appears in chapter 48

Lord John's niece, Henry's sister, a duke's daughter who has crossed the Atlantic on her family's business and has plans of her own that would horrify most of her relations.

First appears in chapter 66

A Scottish general commanding under Burgoyne in the northern campaign, and a distant kinsman of Jamie's. A professional soldier respected on both sides of the line.

First appears in chapter 73

Jamie's sister, mistress of Lallybroch, who has held the estate together through rebellion, occupation and famine while her husband's health failed. She has not seen her son Ian since he was taken from Scotland as a boy, and she has never met Claire's like.

First appears in chapter 73

Jenny's husband, Jamie's boyhood friend and brother-in-law, who lost a leg soldiering and has run Lallybroch ever since. He is dying of a consumption that has been years about it, and he means to do it at home and on his own terms.

Also known as Buck

First appears in chapter 97

A Highlander with a family connection to Roger that neither of them enjoys, who has come through the stones himself and turns up in the twentieth century with nowhere to go and no way back.