Outlander Book Club: Drums of Autumn Chapter 1 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

We start the chapter at the hanging. Jamie attends to be there for his friend, Gavin Hayes, and it all starts with getting Gavin drunk before the hanging. Well, that’s something Gavin requested, and who can blame him considering it’s his last day on Earth?

Claire doesn’t know Gavin all that well, but she is going to be there for Jamie. Fergus and Duncan Innes are also there.

Where is Young Ian? We find out after the hanging (and one of the prisoners who breaks free from the line and rushes off) that Young Ian was playing dice. He wins Rollo, a part-dog, part-wolf specimen that Claire is not happy to have around her. She thinks back to facing against the wolves in the first Outlander book.

Young Ian and Jamie take to Rollo immediately, and it’s not like Rollo is aggressive to anyone. However, he does help to make a parting in the people at a tavern.

The group has made it to Charleston, where they hope to be able to sell one of the gemstones to free up their money. However, they are strangers in the town, and people saw that they were there for Gavin. They’re viewed with suspicion and they know there’s a risk of being mugged for their gemstones.

So, they agree that they will sleep in the woods away from the town that night. They’ll then figure out what they’re going to do.

Jamie wants to get Young Ian on a ship to Scotland. It’s clear that Young Ian doesn’t want to go, but Claire thinks about how things just seem to happen to Young Ian. As readers, we could say the same about Claire, right? And even Jamie. However, Jamie knows how to handle himself a lot better than Young Ian.

Fergus arrives at the tavern after dealing with Gavin’s body. He shares that an Anglican vicar is charging an extortionate amount to have Gavin’s body buried in the cemetery. They don’t have that money, but Jamie and Duncan know that Gavin would never want to be buried in the woods. They tell a story of Gavin seeing something in the woods in the past and never going back in the dark again.

There’s also a discussion about the family Gavin had. He had a wife and son, but nobody knows what happened to them. His brother was transported to the colonies after Culloden, and now nobody knows where he is. Jamie and Duncan are all that Gavin have.

After singing to Gavin’s memory, we get started with the story. It’s time to figure out what’s next.

It’s worth noting that Marsali isn’t in the colonies. She’s also not been mentioned at all. I remember reading something about Diana Gabaldon admitted she’d forgotten all about Marsali at first when writing Drums of Autumn, but she’s still in Jamaica at this point in the story.