The Kingdom of Slender Swords

The Kingdom of Slender Swords by Hallie Erminie Rives.. About the author:. Hallie Erminie Rives (May 2 1874 – August 16 1956) was a best-selling popular novelist and wife of the American diplomat Post Wheeler. Rives wrote her first novel at age eight though her writing was not encouraged by her parents. Her first novel was published when she was eighteen. In her novels she addressed politics between the Northern and Southern United States issues of race and sex causing great debate among critics. Among them was Smoking Flax (1897) a novel controversial even at the time which takes a favorable position on lynching. The novel is about an African American man accused of raping and murdering a white woman who was lynched after the governor commuted his sentence to life. Many of her novels were bestsellers. Other books she wrote were better received by critics than Smoking Flax.