For this installment of our weekly book reviews from Booklist, the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication, we have Donna Seaman’s review of “Bread of Angels” by Patti Smith, first published January 6, 2026, on Booklist Online.
Enjoy.
“Bread of Angels”
By Patti Smith. 288p. Random, $30 (9781101875124).
In 2025 Smith toured the U.S. and Europe to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her indelible first album, “Horses,” as her gorgeous fourth memoir appeared, following her book of photographs, “A Book of Days” (2022). “Bread of Angels” is a spellbinding tale about the making of a writer who also unexpectedly became an uncompromising and provocative singer and songwriter. Smith vividly describes herself as a sickly child sustained by her supercharged imagination and passion for books. A dreamer and a wanderer, Smith was enthralled by nature, sensing that there “were spirits everywhere.” She also wrestled with questions of faith and calling, committing herself early on to becoming an artist, “a sacred profession, requiring great sacrifice.” Always sensitive to the deepest, most mysterious aspects of life, Smith chronicles the making of her albums, the excitement and pressure of international tours, the mutual love-at-first-sight with musician Fred Smith, and her, for many, shocking decision to leave the limelight for a quiet married life in a small house on a canal outside Detroit. There the couple had a son and a daughter and Smith devoted herself to writing until Fred’s early death, which propelled her back to the stage and the recording studio after a 14-year hiatus.
Fred’s passing is but one of many painful losses Smith honors in a lyrical and haunting litany of grief. Then there’s the identity-altering discovery of the long hidden truth about her paternity. Smith’s remarkable life of struggles and rebounds is radiant with creativity, fertile collaborations, and loving family and friends. Every memory is saturated with feeling, the energy of Smith’s perpetual quest for meaning, her profound and poetically expressed concerns for all that is imperiled on our planet, her empathy, and hope. Smith has many more stories to tell; readers will look forward to her future soulful reflections.— Donna Seaman
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