Swallow is a Dutch girl raised in South Africa among the Kaffirs. Lonely, she gazes from shore over the waves of a storm-tossed sea, and dreams of a brother entering her life . . . and soon finds herself face-to-face with a shipwrecked waif cast ashore by the storm. Swallow grows to love the English boy Ralph Kenzie. He returns her love—but must face the murderous Swart Piet, who is intent on taking Swallow for himself—and equally set on bringing war to the region. Torn from Ralph's side, Swallow faces adventures of her own alongside Sihamba, the Kaffir witch-doctoress. H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925), author of "King Solomon's Mines, " combines romance and exotic adventure in this novel of the Voortrekkers of 1836.
Author
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and the creator of the Lost World literary genre. His stories, situated at the lighter end of the scale of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. He was also involved in agricultural reform and improvement in the British Empire. His breakout novel was King Solomon's Mines (1885), which was to be the first in a series telling of the multitudinous adventures of its protagonist, Allan Quatermain. Haggard was made a Knight Bachelor in 1912 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Conservative candidate for the Eastern division of Norfolk in 1895. The locality of Rider, British Columbia, was named in his memory.
