Publisher's Synopsis
Rachel Dove, a British missionary's daughter who has been trekked almost all her young life around the wilds of Africa while her father preaches the Good Word to the natives and her mother suffers silently. Her life is turned around when fellow teenager Richard Darrien rescues her from a flash flood; their common initials alone may clue the reader in that these 2 are another pair of Haggard's predestined lovers. Some years later however, Rachel not having seen Richard during all that intervening time, runs afoul of 1 of the author's patented lustful villains, Ishmael, a renegade Englishman who plots with the Zulu king to have Rachel for his own. This task is made complicated for the rogue when the Zulus come to view Rachel as their Inkosazana y Zoola or Great Lady of the Heavens; the embodiment and incarnation of their goddess. Rachel, accompanied by Noie, her faithful half Zulu attendant discovers a lost civilisations, the Ghost Kings: a dwarf-like tribe of tree worshippers who are able to peer into the future with their bowls of dew. Similarly, Ishmael who practically goes insane with lust over the beautiful Rachel. Noie is the exotic woman who dares much for love and sacrifice more. Rachel's mother and to a lesser degree, Rachel herself are endowed throughout the tale with the gift of second sight, a foreseeing ability that aids her on several crucial occasions. And while the Zulu umtakatis (wizards) do not play a role here. The magic of the Ghost Kings is shown to be very real and not a little eerie.Henry Rider Haggard was born at Bradenham, Norfolk, to Sir William Meybohm Rider Haggard, a barrister, and Ella Doveton, an author and poet. He was the eighth of ten children. He was initially sent to Garsington Rectory in Oxfordshire to study under the Reverend H.J. Graham but, unlike his older brothers who graduated from various Public Schools, he ended up attending Ipswich Grammar School. This was because his father, who regarded him as somebody who was not going to amount to much, could no longer afford to maintain his expensive private education. After failing his army entrance exam he was sent to a private 'crammer' in London to prepare for the entrance exam for the British Foreign Office, which in the end he never sat.
