A radiant new memoir from beloved artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award Winner Just Kids.

God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper, writes Patti Smith in this indelible account of her life as an artist. A post-Second World War childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex described in Dickensian detail: consumptive children, vanishing neighbors, an infested rat house, and a captivating book of Irish fairy tales.

We enter the child's world of imagination where Smith, the captain of her loyal and beloved sibling army, vanquishes bullies, communes with the king of tortoises, and searches for sacred silver pennies.

The most intimate of Smith’s memoirs, Bread of Angels, takes us through her teenage years where the first sparks of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative heroes and role models as Patti begins to write poetry, then lyrics, merging both into iconic songs and recordings such as Horses and Easter, ‘Dancing Barefoot’ and ‘Because the Night’.

She leaves it all behind to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith, with whom she creates a life of devotion and adventure on a canal in St. Clair Shores, Michigan with ancient willows and lush pear trees. She builds a room of her own, furnished with a pillow of Moroccan silk, a Persian cup, inkwell, and fountain pen.

The couple spend nights in their landlocked Chris-Craft studying nautical charts and planning new adventures as they start their family.

As Smith experiences profound losses, grief and gratitude are woven through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life, and finally, returning to writing — the one constant in a life driven by artistic freedom and the power of imagination to turn the ordinary into the beautiful, the mundane into the magical, and pain into hope.

In the final pages, we find Patti again on the road, a wanderer who travels to connect with herself, who lives to write and writes to live.

Pages: 288, Year of Publication: 0303, Dimensions: 15.3x15.3cm