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About the Book
“It is a harrowing story of disease, misfortune and sometimes death . . . but it is an enthralling acccount of one man’s endeavor to help those in need.”—George Cohen, Booklist
“I was continually arrested by [Taylor’s] very knowledgeable descriptions of the area and his accounts of what occurred there.”—J.F. Coakley, Harvard University
“The author has achieved a miracle of reconstruction. . . . Taylor opens the door to a fascinating world.”—ForeWord Magazine
“Both violent time and weathered country come to life in layer after layer of carefully researched detail.”—ProgressiveHistorians.com
The first Americans to work with the people of the Middle East were neither spies nor soldiers. They were, in fact, teachers, printers, and missionaries, of whom one was a country doctor from Utica, New York. In June of 1835, Asahel Grant, M.D., and his bride Judith sailed from Boston to heal the sick and save the world. Their destination was the town of Urmia, in northwest Iran, and their intended flock the Nestorian Christians who lived there and in the mountains of Hakkari, across the border in Ottoman Kurdistan. Into the next eight years Grant packed ten lifetimes’ worth of danger, heartbreak, and exertion. He traversed deserts and glaciers, forded rivers, learned fluent Turkish and Syriac, opened schools, tended the sick and dying, confronted bandits, broke bread with thieves and murderers, and narrowly escaped death from drowning, malaria, cholera, influenza, mercury poisoning, dysentery, hypothermia, and assassination. Yet by the time his shattered body gave out, there was no one in the mountains who did not know his name and his legend, and thirty years later Kurds, Nestorians, Jews, and Yezidis still spoke of “Hakim Grant” with reverence.
About the Author
Gordon Taylor’s fascination with the Middle East began in the mid-1960s, when he worked as a Peace Corps teacher in Ankara, Turkey. He has spent over a decade collecting material on Asahel Grant and his work. Taylor, a writer and avid traveler, has spent time in Turkey, Sierra Leone, Greece and Israel, and now lives with his wife in Seattle, Washington.
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