The Way of Tea and Justice: Rescuing the World's Favorite Beverage from Its Violent History - Softcover

"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.

"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

"[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

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.