Outlander presents the possibility of new beginnings for its main characters several times throughout the book. When the reader first meets Claire in 1945, she is on the cusp of a fresh start, reunited with her scholar husband Frank before they take up permanent residency in Oxford. As Claire looks at a vase in a store window, she realizes this will be the first time she will lead a domestic life, having been nomadic first a child with her traveling uncle, then as the wife of a scholar who moved from place to place for temporary teaching positions, then most recently as a nurse in the war.

This opportunity for stability is thwarted when Claire travels through an ancient henge in Scotland back to the year 1743. At first horrified by the grueling pace of life in the 18th century, Claire finds herself falling into a pleasant rhythm as the physician at Castle Leoch. Her life in Scotland of 1743 is only further solidified when she marries and then gradually falls in love with the strapping outlaw Jamie Fraser, a noble Scotsman wanted for murder by the English army. After confiding in Jamie about her time traveling past, Claire must decide between her past (which is the future) and her present (which is the past), which also means she must decide between her marriage to scholar Frank and her nascent romance with Jamie.