Outlander Book Club: Drums of Autumn Chapter 55 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
Brianna spends a lot of her time drawing, which is where we find her at the start of the Drums of Autumn chapter. She hears footsteps, and she can tell that there are two people. This leads to Bree thinking about how she enjoys Jocasta’s company alone but she can’t stand Ulysses being there.
The problem is Ulysses will describe everything to Jocasta. It is a bit selfish of Brianna to think this way, but it’s also understandable. She’s not had someone describe every brushstroke, and it must feel uncomfortable. All Ulysses is doing is helping Jocasta paint a picture in her mind.
Jocasta tells Brianna that visitors are coming and Bree should change. There is no argument against that so Brianna packs up her things. When Jocasta tells her to leave them, Bree takes just a sketchbook that she refuses to let Ulysses look through.
Brianna thinks about why there have been so many visitors lately. All of the visitors tend to be single men, and Phaedre confirms everything Brianna is thinking. Jocasta wants to get Brianna married to someone suitable. Jocasta doesn’t think that Roger is coming back, so she wants to get Bree married to someone who will be a good manager.
Wait, what? Yes, Jocasta is leaving River Run to Brianna in her will. It doesn’t matter that Brianna doesn’t want the plantation, the sawmill, and more. However, Bree will struggle to run the place as a woman, and that means finding a good manager to deal with that part of it all.
That evening, Brianna gets the chance to talk to Ulysses. She thinks about how she’ll own him at some point, and that’s something that she just can’t comprehend. She asks him if he wants to be free, which is when we get Ulysses’s story.
He tells her about being born free but his dad dying when he was young. Ulysses’s mother sold herself into indentured servitude because she couldn’t survive without her husband. When she died, the man who bought the contract claimed she was a slave and that made Ulysses the son of a slave. He was sold on to a schoolmaster, which is how he learned to read and write.
Eventually, he was sold to Hector Cameron. He then became Jocasta’s eyes when she lost her sight. He was a lucky man when it came to his masters, but he doesn’t remember his birth name.
With that, the chapter comes to an end. We’ll have to wait a while to revisit River Run.