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Cover of Bread of Angels

Bread of Angels

by Patti Smith

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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–World War II childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex described in Dickensian detail: consumptive children, vanishing neighbors, an infested rat house, and a beguiling book of Irish fairy tales. 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 when the first glimmers of art and romance take hold.…

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"In her moving memoir Bread of Angels ( public library ), she traces the trajectory of a life stubbornly defiant of the odds — the odds of bodily survival, with a “Proustian childhood” punctuated by tuberculosis, scarlet fever, measles, mumps, chicken pox, and the A/H2N2 virus; the odds of success: born into a poor family, her father, unable to afford a car, walking two miles to take the bus for his night shift; the odds of spiritual survival, with losses so harrowing to read about it is hard…"
Best Books of 2025 · themarginalian.org