Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone recap

Fraser's Ridge, 1779 to 1780. Roger, Brianna and their children arrive from Scotland through the stones, and for the first time the whole family is on the same mountain at once. Jamie and Claire rebuild the Big House while Jamie, obliged to fill his land grant, takes in settlers whose politics he cannot choose, among them a retired Royal Navy captain, Charles Cunningham, whose Loyalist following grows into a rival congregation and a standing threat. Claire practises medicine and keeps bees, Brianna plumbs the house, Roger preaches, Jenny Murray runs what she can, and Frances Pocock is brought up as a daughter. In the meantime the war moves south: Savannah falls to the British and an allied assault on it fails, and the Grey family, hunting a son reported dead in an American prison camp, discovers that Benjamin Grey is alive and serving the other side under an assumed name. The quarrel on the Ridge finally breaks into the open as the backcountry rises, and Jamie's militia rides with the force that destroys a Loyalist army at Kings Mountain. The family ends the book together, the war unfinished.

Claire Randall walked through a Highland stone circle in 1945, came out two hundred years earlier, and married James Fraser. Sent back through the stones pregnant before Culloden, she raised their daughter Brianna in the twentieth century and returned to the past for good twenty years later; the two of them eventually settled in the North Carolina backcountry and founded Fraser's Ridge. Brianna followed them through the stones and married Roger MacKenzie, who came after her. Jamie also has a son by another woman, William, raised as an English earl by Jamie's friend Lord John Grey, who kept the secret for eighteen years. The Revolution then took the family apart: the Ridge burned, Jamie was reported drowned and was not, Claire married Lord John in the belief that she was a widow, and William learned in the same week who his father really was and left the army. Jamie fought at Saratoga and at Monmouth and gave up his commission; Claire was shot and survived; Young Ian married the Quaker Rachel Hunter; and Roger and Brianna, separated across two centuries by their son's abduction, were reunited in the past and set out for America. At the end of the last book Jamie and Claire came home to the burned Ridge to build again, with Jamie's sister Jenny and a girl named Frances in their keeping, and the war swinging south toward them.

Fraser's Ridge, 1779. Roger, Brianna, Jeremiah and Amanda arrive on the mountain after crossing through the stones and then the Atlantic, and for the first time in years the whole family is in one place. The new Big House is going up on the site of the old one, and everyone has an opinion about it: Brianna wants water piped indoors, Claire wants a surgery, Jamie wants it finished before winter. Claire re-establishes her practice, plants a garden and takes on beehives; Jenny Murray installs herself in the household; Frances Pocock, the girl William left in the Frasers' keeping, begins to be brought up as a daughter of the house. Young Ian and Rachel are settled nearby and expecting their first child. Jamie has given up his Continental commission but holds a Crown-era land grant he is obliged to fill with tenants, and the war, which is turning toward the southern colonies, has not finished with him.

New settlers come up the mountain, and Jamie must take them as they come. Among them is Captain Charles Cunningham, a retired Royal Navy officer, with his elderly mother; he is courteous, competent, and openly of the King's party. He also preaches, which puts him directly across from Roger, whose congregation is already an awkward mix of Presbyterians, Catholics and people who attend for the singing. The Ridge begins to sort itself into those who will hold with the Crown and those who will not, and the sorting shows up in small malice and in things that burn. Brianna's improvements go into the house; Jem and Mandy have to be taught what not to say in front of neighbours; Claire is watched with the old suspicion that attaches to a woman who knows too much about medicine. Jamie holds the peace on the mountain by reputation and by refusing to be provoked, and starts counting who would follow him if it came to muster.

The division on the Ridge hardens into two congregations and two lists of names. Cunningham's following grows, Roger's splits, and both men go on preaching. Jamie's militia obligations come back: the backcountry is being asked which way it will go, oaths are demanded, and a man's answer decides how his neighbours treat him. Claire's surgery fills with the ordinary catastrophes of a settlement, and Rachel's pregnancy advances. Away from the mountain the war has moved decisively south: the British hold Savannah and are working inland, and the Grey family is in the middle of it. Lord John and his brother Hal are pursuing the one thing Hal will not let go of, the fate of his eldest son Benjamin, reported dead in an American prison camp, and William, out of the army and refusing his own name, is drawn back into the search because there is nobody else to do it.

The southern campaign comes to a head at Savannah, where a French fleet and an American army lay siege to the British garrison in the autumn of 1779 and the assault fails at heavy cost, leaving the city in British hands and the Grey family inside it. Hal's search turns up a young woman, Amaranthus Cowden, who presents herself as Benjamin's widow with an infant son, which makes the child the heir to a dukedom and makes her account of herself a matter of some importance. William is not satisfied by it. On the Ridge the house is habitable, Claire's practice is established, and Roger and Brianna go on quietly assembling what the written record says about the family: the old newspaper notice of Jamie and Claire's deaths, the traces of Frank Randall's research, and the question of how much of it can be changed and how much cannot.

The Grey family's long grief turns out to have been misplaced. Benjamin Grey is alive: he did not die in the prison camp, he changed sides, and he has been serving with the American forces under an assumed name, leaving a wife who believes herself a widow and a son who is heir to his grandfather's title. William finds him, which puts the whole business in William's hands and satisfies nobody. Amaranthus's position and her son's are now anything but simple. Meanwhile the British are pushing inland from the coast, the Carolina backcountry is filling with Loyalist militia and with the men raised against them, and the Ridge, still holding two congregations and two allegiances, is directly in the path of it. Jamie begins calling in the men who will come.

The war reaches the mountain. The backcountry rises, the Ridge's militia musters, and in October 1780 a Loyalist army is brought to battle at Kings Mountain and destroyed, with the Ridge's men among the riflemen who surround it. The fight settles, brutally, the argument the settlement has been having for two years, and the households on the mountain that held with the Crown can no longer hold with it quietly. Rachel is delivered of her child. The Frasers count what the campaign has cost them and what is left of the settlement, and Claire's surgery works through the aftermath. Away to the south the British still hold the coastal cities, and the Grey family's affairs, with Benjamin alive on the wrong side and Amaranthus's son heir to a dukedom, are no nearer settled.

The book closes with the Frasers together on their own mountain and the war unfinished. The new Big House is standing and full: Jamie and Claire, Jenny Murray, Frances Pocock growing up as a daughter of the house, Roger and Brianna with Jem and Mandy, and Young Ian and Rachel with a child of their own nearby. The argument between the mountain's Loyalist and rebel households has been settled by the war rather than by anyone on the Ridge, and Roger preaches to what remains. The southern war goes on around them, the British still hold the coast, and Jamie's militia obligations have not ended with one battle. Among the Greys nothing is resolved: Benjamin is alive and on the American side under a false name, Hal has his son back only in the worst possible form, Amaranthus and her small son are entangled in a succession that now has no honest answer, and William stands outside every allegiance offered him, including his father's. Roger and Brianna are still holding the family's own history in their hands, knowing more about what is coming than anyone around them and no more certain than before how much of it can be changed.

The southern war reaches the mountain and settles what the Ridge has been arguing about for two years. Jamie musters the militia; the Loyalist faction that grew up around Captain Cunningham and the rebel households come to open conflict, and the backcountry Loyalist army is destroyed at Kings Mountain in the autumn of 1780, with the Ridge's men in the fight. The settlement comes out of it changed and smaller, its allegiances no longer arguable. The Frasers end the book in the finished house with the family gathered around them: Jenny in the household, Frances being raised as a daughter, Roger preaching to a congregation that has stopped splitting, Brianna's improvements running through the place, and Young Ian and Rachel with a child of their own. Among the Greys, the family's private catastrophe is out in the open: Benjamin, mourned for years, is alive and serving on the American side under another name, with a wife and son who were told he was dead, and neither Hal nor William has decided yet what is to be done about any of it. William remains outside every allegiance on offer, including his father's. The Carolinas are still the seat of the war, the British hold the coast, and nothing about the Frasers' position on the mountain is settled.