'Revelatory' Guardian
'A triumph' Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times
'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 moving account of her life. Her childhood imagination blossoms in the condemned housing complex where Smith grows up. The captain of her loyal sibling army, she vanquishes bullies, communes with the king of tortoises and searches for sacred 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 the formation of a rock and roll band and the recording of the iconic album Horses.

Smith leaves public life to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith. On a canal in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, they build a home together and start a family. He studies aviation and navigation while she invents a room of her own, entering daily at dawn 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 sequel to Smith's classic Just Kids, this memoir is an ode to love, sacrifice, and the artist's calling.

'Smith's eye for life's everyday transcendence rarely fails her' Sunday Times, 'Books of the Year'