“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith

review by Meredith McKinnie

“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”

Christmas is a time for reading the classics, or so I believe. I kept Betty Smith’s novel on my shelf for the last few years, waiting for the perfect moment to indulge. The story is set at the turn of the century in the poverty-stricken and immigrant-populated Brooklyn. Dominated by the Irish, Germans, East European Jews, and Italians, all vying for the American dream, this area is rife with hardship and the pressures of generational poverty. We meet little Francie Nolan, a young girl sitting on the steps of a tenement, glancing at a tree pushing its way through the concrete, a metaphor for our heroine and her journey in this little neighborhood of Williamsburg.

Francie is not the favored child. Her determined, laboring mother Katie has little time for emotion and believes the family’s best financial bet is supporting the pursuits of Francie’s young son. Being illiterate, Katie wants more for her children and insists on one day owning property, the sign of prosperity. Francie’s lovable, yet wayward father Johnny struggles for long term employment. As a singer, Johnny overindulges in alcohol and spends what little money the family acquires to support his habit. When tragedy strikes, the family must find a way to survive. Francie learns to read and escapes in her books. As many children do, Francie expresses herself in tall tales until one teacher advises her to save the exaggerations for the page. Francie composes stories and tidbits from the world around her, chronicling the lives of people the literature often ignored.

The women are the backbone of this American novel. Besides Francie and her mother Katie, Francie’s aunt Sissy experiences heartbreaking loss and countless romantic scandals that isolate her from the community. Sissy ignores the ramblings on the block and keeps believing in love and chasing it with all her follies. “I know that’s what people say– you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, you’ll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.” As Francie ages, she must choose between school and work, between the chance to better her life or keep her family afloat in the meantime.

Betty Smith’s impeccable attention to detail carries the novel, as the story is based on her own experience growing up a second-generation immigrant in Brooklyn. The story is a time capsule of a time long past, yet oddly still present in the human experience. 

“Sometimes I think it’s better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be… safe. At least she knows she’s living.”