Patti Smith has just announced a new memoir ‘Bread of Angels’ on the way this fall out on November 4th via Random House and Bloomsbury Trade (in the UK), and it will focus on her childhood in working class Philadelphia and South Jersey, her move to Michigan, her marriage to Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, and her grief over his death in 1994.
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’.
“It took a decade to write this book, grappling with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime. I’m hoping that people will find something they need,” Smith said in a statement. The book’s release date falls on the anniversary of Fred Smith’s death and the birthday of Robert Mapplethorpe, her late friend and famed photographer.
“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,” reads a description on Random House’s website. “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.”
The cover art is still to be revealed, but you can pre-order ‘Bread Of Angels’ now.