Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man

Slippy McGee is narrated by Father Armand Jean De Rancé, a Catholic priest. He lives and works in the town of Appleboro, South Carolina, where most of the ordinary townspeople are protestant, but a lot of the poor people who work at the mill and the factory are Catholic immigrants. One day a couple of them bring an injured man they've found to De Rancé. The man's leg has to be amputated, and while he's recovering, he stays at the Parish House. De Rancé soon realizes that the man is the famous safecracker, Slippy McGee, but he doesn't say anything about it to anyone, and the two of them decide that henceforth Slippy will be known as John Flint. ...

About the author:

Marie Conway Oemler (May 29, 1879 - June 7, 1932) was an American author from Georgia. She wrote numerous books and was a contributor to publications including The Century Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Women's Home Companion, and Ladies Home Journal. Her books Slippy McGee and A Woman Named Smith are part of the Library of Congress Collection and have been digitized. Three films have been adapted from her novels.

Oemler's first works were poetry and short stories, published in magazines from 1907 to 1917. Her first book, Slippy McGee, was published in 1917 and had slow sales at first. However, it had repeated printings and became Oemler's most popular novel. In 1919, Oemler's novel A Woman Named Smith was published. The book focused on a love story set in a haunted house in the South. Her next novel, The Purple Heights (1920), became a bestseller.

She wrote the 1927 novel The Holy Lover focusing on John Wesley, an 18th century English religious leader. A historical novel, this work deviated from the popular fiction she created during most of her career, and stood alone as her most serious work. Most of her novels were written to appeal to wider audiences, using sensationalist adventure, romance, and suspense in her plots. (wikipedia.org)