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
neighbours an infested rat house and a beguiling book of Irish fairytales. 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 where
the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as
creative heroes and role models as Patti starts to write poetry then lyrics merging both into
the 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 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 in
a life 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 on the road again the vagabond who travels to commune with herself who lives to
write and writes to live.
