Letters from a Distant Shore: The Journal of Sarah Ann Breath

In 1849, within days of her marriage to missionary printer Edward Breath, Sarah Ann Breath joined her husband to begin a four month journey to Oroomiah (modern Urumia), Persia. Her narrative, written in a highly descriptive flowing prose, describes the journey by sea, steamer and caravan to a Nestorian community. Breath's journal pays careful attention to the Nestorian, Assyrian, and Kurdish communities she encountered. For Breath, the journey would transform her sensibilities, challenge her awareness of cultural differences and plunge her into a world whose dangers and opportunities she could never have imagined.