Storbakken chronicles the Bowery Mission’s beginnings on New York City’s oldest, roughest street, and its formidable challenge to bring food, shelter, clothing, jobs, and rehabilitation to the down and out. The book’s most moving moments give testament to lives turned back from addiction and despair. Storbakken does not shy away from the grim sights and smells of rescue work; neither does he condescend. “There but for the grace of God go I” clearly inspires these mission workers, as does Jesus’ call to love and serve “the least of these.” The Bowery Mission began during the nineteenth century’s Gilded Age, and the book ends during our new Gilded Age of growing income inequality and homelessness. It could not be more timely and welcome.

Storbakken’s honest accounts of the struggles so many of God’s children face reveal the gritty realities of life in modern America, and the redemptive grace that the Bowery Mission seeks to share with those who are hungry and thirsty, naked or sick, strangers and prisoners, on and beyond Manhattan’s Oldest Street.