2024 Readers' Favorite Book Awards Gold Medal Winner in Non-Fiction – Inspirational 2023 Living Now Book Awards Gold Medalist in Inspirational Memoir - Female
“In lyrical, at times searing, prose, [Sidoti] captures her core loneliness. Her story is a riveting intergenerational tale of women doing the best they can, sometimes failing painfully.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A Smoke and a Song will have you crying, laughing, and shaking your head in amazement . . . Please do not pass up this book, but put it on the top of your reading list as you will not regret it.”
—Readers’ Favorite, 5 stars
“She [Sidoti] ultimately makes peace with these past selves by discussing her traumas with her family and using various spiritual practices, including yoga, to remind herself that ‘new life is blooming. Loss is looming. And both gladness and grief grip at the gate.’ This is powerful stuff.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Inspiring and reflective, A Smoke and A Song should be required reading for anyone looking within and beyond. Sherry Sidoti weaves us through a journey of self-discovery, heartbreak, and self-actualization. She brings to life each part of ourselves—the parts we know and the parts we have a harder time listening to—all in the name of self-love.”
—Chelsea Handler, #1 New York Times best-selling author, comedian, and Dear Chelsea podcast host
“Sherry Sidoti’s wisdom and compassion are a powerful gift that she generously shares in this achingly beautiful story of loss, survival, and healing.“
—Jeannette Walls, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Glass Castle
“Earthy and magical, A Smoke and a Song is a woman’s anthem. With the heart of a mother and the soul of a warrior, Sherry Sidoti takes us on her unwavering quest towards self-agency, braiding music, poetry, art, culture, and mysticism with grounded spirituality and a wry New York City ‘edge.’ This story is steeped in healing tools from the author's decades of study and teaching, without being pushy or prescriptive. Sidoti trusts her readers to mine the raw ore from her story and polish it into gold for their own.”
—Anita Kopacz, best-selling author of Shallow Waters: A Novel
“A Smoke and a Song is a winning book! Sherry Sidoti’s prose is absolutely gorgeous—lyrical and tender, moody and insightful, mystical and relatable. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. A memoir told with such nuanced self-awareness; you’ll find yourself needing to put the book down at moments just to pause, take in her reflections, and make meaning of your own story through hers.”
—Nancy Slonim Aronie, author of Writing from the Heart and Memoir as Medicine
“I discovered the poet Stanley Kunitz while I was a college student at NYU and his words saved my life; still do. All these years later, his granddaughter’s words are saving my life and if that isn’t magic, I dare you to tell me what is. By sharing her story, Sherry Sidoti invites us to remember what it is to love deeply and then to go out into the world with that knowing so that we can live big, beautiful, and messy lives.”
—Jennifer Pastiloff, best-selling author of On Being Human
“Sherry Sidoti beautifully weaves together a deeply moving memoir that captures the many complexities of love and our relationship with the ones we care about the most. I came away moved and inspired by her willingness to be so transparent and authentic.”
—Paul Samuel Dolman, author of Hitchhiking with Larry David and What Matters Most podcast host
“A seeker’s story of healing intergenerational trauma. In her unwavering commitment to heal, with body informed awareness, the author alchemizes inherited history to rewrite her own narrative breath by breath, beat by beat. Every broken family system has a healer. Sherry Sidoti is one.”
—Shalom Harlow, model, actress, and yogini
“Yearning and desire ooze from between the lines in this complicated family memoir exquisitely written by a New York City girl. Sherry Sidoti’s words pull us through her life stages with love, humor, and raw honesty as she seeks self-compassion. When you finish, you'll want to start all over again. A Smoke and a Song is that good.”
—Kathy Elkind, author of To Walk It Is To See It
“A Smoke and a Song makes me feel like I’ve stumbled upon a beautiful explorer’s locked diary and picked the lock. The narrative is both delicious and filled with disaster, careening at breakneck pace through a life fully engaged in raw, sensual, and inspiringly elevated consciousness. You’ll be completely riveted by Sidoti’s story—this book will help you see and digest the deepest questions and twists of your own life and relationships. It’s a book you will thrill to read and one you’ll keep close for a long time to come.”
—Susan Madden-Cox, host of 3 Crones podcast and owner of the ocean earth wind fire yoga studio
“Through skillful and engaging story-telling, Sherry sheds light on the messy in-between of our deep desire for belonging, and the allure of letting it all go.”
—Richelle Fredson, host of Bound + Determined podcast
“With A Smoke and a Song Sherry Sidoti has crafted an astute and closely-observed memoir of family, sisterhood, motherhood, loss, and how we can build beautiful, bracing lives even while mourning aspects of our personal history. Her warmth and her generous heart are evident on every page.”
—Ronit Plank, memoirist and host of the Podcast Let’s Talk Memoir
2023-05-07
Sidoti, founder of the FLY Yoga School, reflects upon her path of healing and self-discovery after surviving childhood chaos and trauma.
The author, born in 1970, is the youngest of three sisters. Their father, Warren Drapkin, departed their Brooklyn townhouse and moved into an upstate Catskills cabin when Sidoti was a year old, leaving their mother, Babette, to raise the three girls on her own. Babette (frequently working three jobs to keep the family afloat) and her daughters were a combustible mix. “The second [Babette’s] home,” Sidoti writes, “she’s on edge—high-strung, agitated, dodgy like a chihuahua, small and nonintimidating but with a loud bark.” Lisa, the oldest, was the most volatile, constantly fighting with her mother, both verbally and physically. Middle sister Maddy was the most self-centered of the trio, and the author was the peacemaker who sought refuge from the fighting curled up among her mother’s collection of tall potted plants, humming quietly to herself. In the late 1970s, Babette’s mother, Grandma Elise, convinced her daughter to move the quartet to a West 15th Street loft in Manhattan, just blocks away from her own studio. The eccentric, thrice-married Elise, a poet and artist, now permanently settled down with American Poet Laureate Stanley Kuntz, provided the emotional support and guidance Sidoti lacked at home. Elise also introduced her to smoking—because women “…deserve to have something just for ourselves.” The author writes in the present tense, bringing readers directly into her life’s impactful moments, weaving a narrative around loving but difficult relationships with the people she cares about most. In lyrical, at times searing, prose, she captures her core loneliness. Her story is a riveting intergenerational tale of women doing the best they can, sometimes failing painfully. Her search for healing leads her to yoga (which occupies a bit too much of the memoir), meditation, and a bit of mysticism. Touchingly, her meditative chants recall her soothing childhood humming.
A stylish and substantial remembrance with poignantly memorable characterizations.
