Outlander Book Club: Voyager Chapter 20 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
Claire sees Joe in his office at work. We get to know a little more about Joe—or more like his son. His son has changed his name, wanting to connect to his African roots. It’s clear from Joe that they’ve been in America for as long as he knows, but he knows nothing about his past. Joe’s son has changed him name, and Joe isn’t the biggest fan of the decision.
However, something that I love is that Joe doesn’t tell Claire that he’s forcing his own views onto his son. He’s just letting this run its course. It may be a phase or it may be something his son continues in the future. This is 1968 and a time of civil rights protests, so Joe just can’t call it. But he clearly doesn’t want to push his son away.
Breaking off the conversation is the visit from someone from the archeology department at Harvard. Bones were found in a cave in Jamaica and Joe has agreed to look at them. Claire was going to leave, but Joe wants to see if she can do her thing on the bones like she can with patients. She’s the best diagnostician in the hospital.
It turns out she can. While holding the aged skull of the woman, she says that the woman was murdered. That’s not something anyone has told her, and it’s only when Joe finds vertebrae that he’s able to confirm it. Someone tries to take the head off completely with a dull weapon.
Something Joe points out is that the woman was white. The man from the archeology department isn’t happy to hear that. He was sure the skeleton would belong to a Black woman, a slave. Joe knows that the guy will go for a second opinion. As Claire notes, historians don’t like being wrong.
Once alone, Claire gets to why she came. She wants to know if she’s sexually attractive. Joe is understandably concerned about answering at first, but he realizes that Claire does want an honest answer. So he gives it.
Joe realizes that Claire has met a man. When Claire mentions she hasn’t seen him in 20 years, Joe connects the dots. She’s going back to Brianna’s real father. Yes, he figured it out a long time ago, but he doesn’t judge. That’s not his thing.
Claire leaves Joe with her resignation from the hospital and makes sure everything is needed for Brianna when she comes of age. Claire has made the decision to go, and now she’s going to return to Scotland.