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.

Author: Becca Stevens
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Jericho Books
Published: 11/04/2014
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781455519026


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2014
Booklist 10/01/2014 pg. 24
Library Journal 10/15/2014 pg. 111
Publishers Weekly 10/20/2014

About the Author
Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest serving as chaplain at St. Augustine's at Vanderbilt University. She is the founder of Magdalene and Thistle Farms, social enterprises for women recovering from violence, prostitution, and addiction. The White House named her a Champion of Change in 2011. The Small Business Council of America named her the Humanitarian of the Year in 2014.
Learn more: BeccaStevens.org