Patti Smith might have two memoirs under her belt already, but that doesn’t mean her storied life has been captured in full through text just yet. The musician and poet has just announced Bread of Angels, a new memoir about her childhood in working class Philadelphia and South Jersey, her marriage to guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith of MC5, the move to Michigan to raise a family together, and more. It’s set to come out on November 4 via Random House.
“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.”
Bread of Angels is the third memoir Smith has written, following 2010’s Just Kids, in which she details her young life in New York City and dating the late Mapplethorpe, and 2015’s M Train, which includes meditations on travel, her home in Rockaway Beach before and after Hurricane Sandy, black coffee, and more. She first teased a sequel to Just Kids back in 2012, and again confirmed it was in the works during her appearance at the New Yorker Festival three years later. Meanwhile, Just Kids was also tapped for a Showtime series development a few years after its release, and got an expanded edition featuring never-before-seen photographs and a new introduction in 2018.
Later this fall, Smith is heading out on a 50th anniversary tour of Horses, her landmark debut, where she and her band will play the album in full each night. Joining Smith on stage will be longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, both of whom recorded with Smith on the 1975 LP.
