The summer that Coltrane died, the summer of love and turmoil. A chance meeting in Brooklyn leads two young people down the path of art, devotion, and initiation.

Patti Smith will become a poet and musician, and Robert Mapplethorpe will channel his extremely provocative style into the art of photography. Bound by the ties of innocence and excitement, they traverse New York City from Coney Island to 42nd Street.

In 1969, the couple takes residence at the famous Chelsea Hotel. It is a time of heightened awareness. The worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual liberation are exploding.

The book is not just the autobiography of Patti Smith. Written in a novelistic style, it begins as a love story and ends as an elegy, a farewell to New York City at the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s. It is also the chronicle of the rise of two young, unknown artists, the prelude to their success.

National Book Award USA 2010