"God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper writes Patti Smith in this indelible account
of her life as an artist. A post-World War II childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex
described in Dickensian detail: consumptive children vanishing neighbors an infested rat
house and a beguiling book of Irish fairy tales. We enter the child's world of the 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 when the first glimmers of
art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative heroes and role
models as Smith starts to write poetry then lyrics merging both into the iconic recordings
and songs 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
fulsome 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 maps and charting new adventures as they start their family. As Smith suffers
profound losses grief and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children
rebuilding her life and finally writing again-the one constant on a path driven by artistic
freedom and the power of the imagination to transform the mundane into the beautiful the
commonplace into the magical and pain into hope. In the final pages we meet Patti Smith on
the road again the vagabond who travels to commune with herself who lives to write and writes
to live"--
