“I awoke with a knife at my neck and the palpable pounding of a rapist’s heartbeat on my chest.” So begins Christ Kitchen—a story about redemption and healing based on the experience that molds the author’s life, brings her to faith, and fans a passion to help other desperate women living in poverty.

Jan Martinez tells a compelling story of women living in poverty in America, demystifying the baffling complexities of poverty, and providing thoughtful solutions suited to individuals or groups. The book provides a practical, replicable example for overcoming poverty through Christ-based mentoring and employment at Christ Kitchen, a job-training ministry to low-income women.

Based on the mentoring approach Jesus uses with the Samaritan woman at the well, the book exposes God’s heart for the poor and equips us to share his message and our lives with women who never find their way to church. Masterfully, he shows us how to talk with society’s outcasts and love them into the Kingdom. With equal mercy, the Lord shows us the way to finding our true selves through service to the “least of these.”

Through insightful, personal stories of women from the street struggling to change their lives and women from church communities struggling to walk beside them, Christ Kitchen provides a mentored path for both to transcend barriers of class, race, and opportunity to form healing, faithful relationships.