Charlie and Becca

Meet Charles Strobel and Becca Stevens of Nashville.

Charlie and Becca have dedicated their lives to helping men and women on the streets to find their way home. Both of them started by working with individuals, then expanding to serve more and more people, many of them suffering from homelessness. They founded organizations to help men (Room in the Inn by Charlie) and women (Thistle Farms by Becca), and those organizations have spread from Nashville to cities around the country.

I met Charlie for lunch several years ago and tried to talk him into writing a book for my employer, the United Methodist Publishing House. What was the topic? His choice. Over the years, I found that if I gave authors their choice of topics, they would enjoy the book more, as would readers. 

His answer was a friendly no. Years later, I learned that this was his answer to all publishers, and in fact I was in a long line of editors. The topic all of us wanted him to write about was his wonderful organization, Room in the Inn. But he was too busy helping men find food, clothing, and shelter to write a book.   

Then, Charlie got sick, and he was stuck in the hospital, where his main activity was writing. So, at last, he began work on a book. It was The Kingdom of the Poor, published in 2024 by Vanderbilt University Press. 

The book we had dreamed of came true during the year of Charlie’s passing.

As with Charlie, I met Becca in my job as editor. She had just finished a project and, once again, I asked if she would like to write a book. This time the answer was yes.  

The topic, as I had hoped, was her organization to help women survivors of trafficking, prostitution, and addiction. At that time called Magdalene, it later was changed to Thistle Farms.  

To create the book, we asked the women to keep journals for a period of time, then hand them in to Becca, who edited them. The result was the book Find Your Way Home.   

Several years later, when I was writing operas with my friend, composer Anthony Plog, we converted the text to become a libretto called Magdalene: A Thistle Farms Cantata.    

Today, the book and cantata help to spread the word about Becca’s fine work, as does Charlie’s book about his.