'Smith's eye for life's everyday transcendence rarely fails her' Sunday Times 'Books of the
Year' 'A triumph' Joseph O'Connor Irish Times 'Books of the Year' 'Quietly sacred utterly
beautiful' Service95 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.
