Outlander Book Club: Drums of Autumn Chapter 48 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

Claire and Lizzie are off at another farm to deal with a birth, giving Jamie and Brianna a chance to talk. Brianna goes to the stables to see Jamie, which is where she learns that Jamie will kill a mother cow if she can’t give birth to her baby. The aim is to preserve the life of the baby cow.

It makes Brianna worried. She’s already concerned, and now she’s sure that she is going to die in childbirth. There’s nothing that Jamie can do for this.

Sometimes in the novels, I do feel like emotions come from nowhere. We’ve not had enough chance to really get to know Brianna to see this sudden fear of her dying in childbirth. And it’s not just a fear of what could happen. She’s sure that it is going to happen. It just seemed to jarring reading it the first time, and it still feels that way when reading it now.

This isn’t one of my favorite chapters, though. It’s also when Brianna tells Jamie that she knows everything that happened at Wentworth. Claire told her all about Black Jack Randall, and I really hate that Claire told Brianna everything.

For one, it breaks that trust. I don’t care if Claire never thought Brianna and Jamie would meet. That was a secret that Claire should have taken to the grave. I know secrets about people that I know nobody else will meet, but I would never ever share those secrets to anyone even if they were related.

Secondly, there was no reason for Brianna to know the full truth about what happened to Jamie at Wentworth. It should have been something for Jamie to tell Brianna if the time ever came. Of course, Claire never thought that would happen, but she should have left the entire Wentworth part of the story out.

The only part of this chapter that I do like is how Jamie manages to get Brianna to realize that there was nothing she could have done. Brianna wants to kill Bonnet, and she thinks she could. She also blames herself partly for getting raped.

And this is an understandable feeling. Survivors feel like they could have done something more. Jamie doesn’t just tell Brianna that there was nothing but shows her. He pushes her into attacking him and then manages to overpower her. She’s strong, but not strong enough. Brianna has a sudden realization that she couldn’t have fought Bonnet off, no matter how hard she tried.

From one survivor to another, Jamie knew exactly what Brianna needed in this moment.

At the end of the chapter, we find out that Jamie actually forgives Black Jack Randall for his actions. He remembers that BJR was just a man and his soul is somewhere out there. However, it’s not just a matter of forgiving someone once. He needs to forgive BJR regularly.

He also thinks about Brianna. How can he tell her that forgiveness is the best thing, and it’s hard to do it regularly? He also has to own up to the fact that he and Young Ian have found who they thought was her rapist.