• “The smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting 'Scrooge McDuck' comics.”—Salon.com
  • A time-hopping, continent-spanning salmagundi of genres.”
    —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
  • “These books have to be word-of-mouth books because they're too weird to describe to anybody.”
    —Jackie Cantor, Diana's first editor

“Prologue”

Copyright 1991 Diana Gabaldon

People disappear all the time.  Ask any policeman.  Better yet. ask a journalist.  Disappearances are bread-and-butter to journalists.

Young girls run away from home.  Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again.  Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station.  International financiers change their names and vanishe into the smoke of imported cigars.

Many of the lost will be found, eventually, dead or alive.  Disappearances, after all, have explanations.

Usually.