Outlander Book Club: The Fiery Cross Chapter 97 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
The chapter starts with Claire helping Lizzie with some chores. Roger interrupts them with a wild turkey. He didn’t shoot it, but he did manage to chase it down and kill it himself. Claire is proud of him for that, and Roger is proud of himself. He should be. This is a big moment in him figuring out ways to survive in the 18th century.
However, the focus moves onto blood. Claire wants to take some of Lizzie’s, which is to check whether she’s going to have another malaria flare-up. Claire has figured out a dye that works to show the red blood cells and see malaria within them. When she realizes it works, Claire decides to take Lizzie’s blood for a few days and keep testing. It will allow Claire to administer the treatment quickly to avoid too many chills. Sadly, there still isn’t a cure for Lizzie as penicillin doesn’t work against it.
The topic then moves on to blood types. Roger knows his blood type is O. Claire notes that Brianna’s blood type is B, which means Jamie is either AB or B because she is A. Blood types are genetic.
Claire dives into the scientific elements and explanations. The main thing to take away is that if Jemmy’s blood reacts to both Claire’s and Brianna’s, it would mean that Jemmy is Type O. This could conclude that he is Roger’s son. If Jemmy’s blood only reacts to Claire’s, it does mean there’s still a chance there’s an O type in there, but the B type is also there.
If Jemmy’s blood doesn’t react to Claire’s blood, it would mean Jemmy has an A type somewhere in there. That would mean it would come from Bonnet, although nobody wants to say his name.
It’s not exact, though. Of course, Bonnet could have an O type, this is relatively common. If Jemmy has an O type of blood, it could have come from Bonnet if that’s the case.
Claire does note how Brianna’s blood led to a doctor figuring out that Claire had been unfaithful. Both she and Frank were A types. Frank covered, saying that Claire had been widowed and he adopted Brianna at birth. It settled the doctor, and it was a reasonable lie. In a way, it was also the truth as Claire believed Jamie to be dead, but being widowed young wasn’t completely out of the ordinary in the 1940s and 1950s.
Brianna has already decided that she doesn’t want to know. If Roger wants to know though, she’ll respect that. Roger thinks very briefly about it but decides that he doesn’t want to know. It’s not about what the blood says. Roger has already claimed Jemmy as his own.