Smith begins the book with the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, her friend and one-time romantic partner. Smith is asleep when Mapplethorpe dies in the hospital, having said goodnight to him on the phone earlier. As Mapplethorpe breathes heavily "beneath layers of morphine" (xi), Smith knows she will "never hear him again" (xi). In the morning, Smith wakes with a feeling that Mapplethorpe has died. She sits in her study with a book of paintings by Odilon Redon. In the background, her television plays an opera by Tosca. Mapplethorpe's youngest brother, Edward, calls Smith to tell her Mapplethorpe has passed.

Patti Smith was born into a working-class family on Chicago's North Side on December 30, 1946, during a huge blizzard. Her father recalls Smith as a "long skinny thing with bronchial pneumonia" (4), whom he keeps alive by holding over a steaming bathtub. Smith's younger sister, Linda, is born during another blizzard two years later. When Smith's mother has a son, Todd, soon after, the Smiths move to a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania called Germantown. There they live in "temporary housing set up for servicemen and their children" (4). As a young girl, Smith enjoys playing with her siblings and neighborhood kids in a field they call The Patch.