Synopses & Reviews
What started as an impossible dream-to build a café that employs women recovering from prostitution and addiction-is helping to fuel an astonishing movement to bring freedom and fair wages to women producers worldwide where tea and trafficking are linked by oppression and the opiate wars.
Becca Stevens started the Thistle Stop Café to empower women survivors. But when she discovered a connection between café workers and tea laborers overseas, she embarked on a global mission called "Shared Trade" to increase the value of women survivors and producers across the globe.
As she recounts the victories and unexpected challenges of building the café, Becca also sweeps the reader into the world of tea, where timeless rituals transport to an era of beauty and the challenging truths about tea's darker, more violent history. She offers moving reflections of the meaning of tea in our lives, plus recipes for tea blends that readers can make themselves.
In this journey of triumph for impoverished tea laborers, hope for café workers, and insight into the history of tea, Becca sets out to defy the odds and prove that love is the most powerful force for transformation on earth.
Review
"If you have not already met Becca Stevens of Thistle Farms fame, it's time you had the pleasure, and here's your chance. Just look how she shares tea and happiness-isn't she wonderful?"--James Norwood Pratt, America's Tea Sage, author of JNP's Tea Dictionary, etc.
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"Becca Stevens is a force of nature-both as a speaker and with her words on the page. Her message always gets right to the heart of the matter."--John Prine, songwriter
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"[Women served by thistle Farms] would be dead by now if it weren't for a remarkable initiative by the Rev. Becca Stevens..to help women escape trafficking and prostitution."--Nicholas Kristoff, The New York Times
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PRAISE FOR SNAKE OIL:
"A simple, comforting reflection on one woman's crusade to make a difference in the world."--Kirkus Reviews
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"Rich and insightful."--Booklist
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"SNAKE OIL is one of the best reads I have had in a very long time. Stevens is a consummate storyteller...poignant, persuasive, witty, wise and, ultimately, a passionate lover of God."
--Phyllis Tickle, lecturer on religion in America and author of Emergence Christianity: What it Is, Where it is Going, and Why it Matters
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"In her new book, Becca Stevens does more than reclaim the term Snake Oil, she tells a personal story of reclaiming life, hope, and grace. A truly inspiring read of painful hardships, enduring faith and seizing hope."--Senator Bill Frist, M.D.
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"SNAKE OIL, Becca Stevens' profound and sensual autobiography, carries a weight of joy in every syllable. Stevens' greatest gift--as a writer and as an Episcopal priest--is an ability to make falling in love with God an inevitable, sacred, and necessary reality."
--Alice Randall, author of The Wind Done Gone and Ada's Rules
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"With her signature poetic simplicity, Becca Stevens leads us bravely through her healing journey and along the path she has forged for so many wounded women-so that we can find our own way as both healed and healer. Reading this book is like being anointed with the very oils she writes about."--Nancy Rue, Christy Award-winning author of The Reluctant Prophet trilogy, inspired by Magdalene and Thistle Farms
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"I always think of Becca Stevens as a sort of extraordinary, down-to-earth angel--conscience, guide, inspiration and girlfriend all rolled into one. I will treasure this book."--Lee Smith, author of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger
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"Only Becca Stevens can write a book extolling the virtues of being a snake oil salesman, and have us believe it. After reading this, I'm ready to be anointed!"--Marshall Chapman, author of They Came to Nashville and Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller
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"This book is a fascinating life story of a woman who took the evil done to her and used it for the motivation to do good for abused women around the world. She has been God's instrument for healing and hope for countless numbers of broken women across America."--Tony Campolo, PhD, Eastern University
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"Some old-timey snake-oil salesmen offered the Gospel and then sold their products. Becca Stevens does it the other way around. This book helps explain why her way works better."--Don Schlitz, Grammy Award-winning songwriter
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"Accompanied throughout by deliciously unique recipes for homemade tea blends and brews, Stevens' narrative is a softly delivered meditation on the power of faith and love to make a difference in the lives of those who need it most."--Kirkus
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"With her characteristic warmth, wisdom, and insight, Becca Stevens opens up the strange and fascinating world of tea, masterfully stitching together stories about mindfulness, justice, healing, and community. Few writers exhibit such a remarkable ability to bring faith to life in the very world we can see, touch, taste, smell and feel. Every word of this delightful, instructive book tastes like sacrament."--Rachel Held Evans, author, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
About the Author
Reverend Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest serving as Chaplain at St. Augustine's at Vanderbilt University, and founder of Magdalene and Thistle Farms, a community and social enterprise that stands with women recovering from violence, prostitution, addiction and life on the streets. Magdalene, the residential model, serves women for two years at no cost to residents. Thistle Farms employs residents and graduates who manufacture, market and sell all natural bath and beauty products in over 200 retail stores across the globe.
Stevens was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity and inducted into the Tennessee Women's Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2011 she was named one of 15 "Champions of Change" by the White House. To date, she has raised more than $14 million for the organizations she supports. Stevens lives in Nashville with her husband, Grammy-winning songwriter Marcus Hummon, and their three sons.