Bread of Angels : from the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids

by Smith, Patti | Biography: general
Published 15/09/2026 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 288 pages
127 x 197 x 24mm | 232g

'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'Smith has already issued a handful of memoirs over the decades. Bread of Angels feels like the big one' Times Literary SupplementA 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 moving account of her life. Her childhood imagination blossoms in the condemned housing complex where Smith grows up. Captain of her loyal sibling army, she vanquishes bullies, communes with the king of tortoises and searches for silver pennies. We follow Smith through her teen years and creative evolution: Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as early influences, poetry collides with performance, leading to a rock and roll band and the recording of Horses. Smith leaves public life to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith. On a canal in St Clair Shores, they build a home and start a family while each day she enters a room of her own at awn to write. When her reverie is shattered by a series of profound losses, Smith cares for her children in the aftermath; slowly, she begins to write again.

Both a prequel and a sequel to Just Kids, this memoir is an ode to love, sacrifice and the artist's calling.