Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. In The Ghost Kings Rachel Dove and Richard Darrien meet in Africa, when the brave man saves Rachel, a minister's daughter, from a flash flood. Years pass before they meet again: This time Rachel needs help escaping a Zulu tribe that would have her as their goddess and evading another man who wants her for his own.