Snake Oil: The Art of Healing and Truth Telling buy Becca Stevens

After experiencing sexual abuse as a child, the Rev. Becca Stevens created a nonprofit to help women who have survived prostitution, trafficking, and addiction find sanctuary and security. This is her - and their - story.

Becca Stevens calls herself a "snake oil salesman" - in a positive sense. The social enterprise she founded, Thistle Farms, provides purpose and employment to abused women, providing them with the economic well-being to begin new lives. The natural body-care products that Thistle Farms manufactures - balms, soaps, and lotions, whose ingredients include essential oils - bring healing comfort to the company's customers, too.

In Snake Oil, Stevens tells how her childhood, marked by sexual abuse and her father's tragic death, equipped her with the insight to understand other broken lives, leading her to establish the Magdalene residential community for prostitutes and, later, Thistle Farms. Wise and reflective, Snake Oil offers an empowering narrative as well as a selection of recipes for healing remedies that readers can make themselves.