Outlander Book Club: Written in My Own Heart’s Blood Chapter 29 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

The chapter starts with Roger getting to Lallybroch, but Jem isn’t there. Instead, a dark-haired man steps out, and Roger realizes that the wood paneling is no longer slashed. The paneling was slashed by the English after Culloden, and it was preserved into the 1980s. Well, it’s all whole right now.

Roger meets his grandfather-in-law, Brian Fraser. When Roger explains what’s happened to Jem, Brian offers Roger a place to stay for the night. He wants to help if he can. If only he knew he was going to help search for his great-grandson.

While at Lallybroch, Roger meets a teenage Jenny and learns that Jamie is in France at the university. That helps Roger narrow down the time to between 1737 and 1739.

Roger starts to think about what’s to come for the family. He could tell Brian and Jenny everything, although they’d probably question how he knows the future. The question is whether he could and even should change anything. If he managed to prevent Jamie from being flogged, would it mean that Jamie wouldn’t be near Craigh na Dun when Claire fell through the stones?

These are important questions to ask. Just because something bad happened in the past doesn’t mean that it needs to change. Changing it could lead to something even worse happening. Who knows what would happen to Claire if Dougal and his men with Jamie weren’t there to save her from Black Jack Randall?