A Breath of Snow and Ashes

A Breath of Snow and Ashes is a novel by the American writer Diana Gabaldon, published in 2005. It is the sixth book of the Outlander series.

The series follows Claire Randall, a twentieth-century nurse who travelled back into the eighteenth century and stayed, and Jamie Fraser, the Scottish Highlander she married there. By this point in the sequence the two of them have settled in the mountains of North Carolina as the unrest that leads to the American Revolution begins, and Claire's knowledge of what the war will do is a burden she cannot share with anyone outside the family. The novel covers the household's life on the frontier, the politics of the coming conflict and the practical work of keeping a family together when the authorities and the neighbours are taking sides. Gabaldon writes these books at length, with the historical research and the domestic detail carried at the same pace as the plot.

The series had begun with Outlander in 1991, and it has continued well past this volume with the same characters and their descendants.