麻豆约拍

The cover proclaims it as "the greatest inspirational true story of all time" - bold claims for a book written by a small-town Christian pastor from the mid-west of America.

The Reverend Richard Coles investigates how David Wilkerson's book The Cross and Switchblade became such a phenomenon, helping criminals and drug addicts leave their destructive lives and turn to religion and redemption.

He travels to Salford in Northern England to the Victory Outreach Church to meet Pastor Paul Lloyd, who tells Richard about how he left his life of drug-taking and dealing after reading Wilkerson's book. We also hear from DR Congo, where Amethyst Roth, whose father was saved from his own addiction to drugs by Wilkerson, uses The Cross And The Switchblade in her preaching work now.

David Wilkerson died in a car crash in 2011 but Heart and Soul has spoken to his son, Gary, now a pastor himself in the state of Colorado. He tells the programme about how his father never envisaged the huge impact his book would have around the world. And Reverend Coles reflects on his own work in a small rural parish in England, so different to that of Wilkerson in some of the toughest parts of the United States.