Scottish soldier Jamie Fraser and his wife, Claire Randall, a twentieth century doctor who has traveled two centuries back in time, find themselves in South Carolina on the eve of the American Revolution, where they must fight to save a young girl.

an Edinburgh philosopher and well-meaning intervener in the affairs of others -- makes a comment that suggests the kind of entertainment "The Lost Art of Gratitude" is going to be. "Somebody had told her," Isabel muses, "that the essence of a good still life was the feeling it inspired that something was just on the point of happening. What was about to happen here?" Not much, it turns out. This literary still life will go on for 56 more pages before...