Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely--to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. She is her father's child--romantic and hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive. Betty Smith's poignant, honest novel created a big stir when it was first published over 50 years ago. Her frank writing about life's squalor was alarming to some of the more genteel society, but the book's humor and pathos ensured its place in the realm of classics--and in the hearts of readers, young and old. (Ages 10 and older) --Emilie Coulter


From AudioFile
Anyone who missed reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or who wants to know this moving story again should run, not walk, to the nearest source of this outstanding audiobook. The novel richly merits its status as a "classic." Francie, the protagonist, grows up in the slums of Brooklyn during the early part of the twentieth century, and life treats her badly. Less favored in her dysfunctional family than her brother, forced to leave school early, maltreated by fate and by people--she plunges forward, indomitable, courageous. What makes the listening experience so fine is the compelling and convincing narration by Bernadette Dunne, who not only has Francie down pat, but also captures the assorted other characters. She feels Francie's pain at the setbacks, her joy at the triumphs. And, as Francie matures, so does Dunne's presentation. Clearly Dunne was committed to creating something fine and, like Francie herself, she has. T.H. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The American classic about a young girl's coming of age at the turn of the century.

"A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life...If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience...It is a poignant and deeply understanding story of childhood and family relationships. The Nolans lived in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn from 1902 until 1919...Their daughter Francie and their son Neely knew more than their fair share of the privations and sufferings that are the lot of a great city's poor. Primarily this is Francie's book. She is a superb feat of characterization, an imaginative, alert, resourceful child. And Francie's growing up and beginnings of wisdom are the substance of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." —New York Times

"One of the most dearly beloved and one of the finest books of our day." —Orville Prescott

"One of the books of the century."—New York Public Library

About the Author

Betty Smith was born Elisabeth Wehner on December 15, 1896, the same date as, although five years earlier than, her fictional heroine Francie Nolan. The daughter of German immigrants, she grew up poor in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the very world she re-creates with such meticulous detail in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

After marrying fellow Brooklynite George H.E. Smith, she moved with him to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he was a law student at the University of Michigan. The young bride soon had two daughters, Nancy and Mary, and was forced to wait until the girls had entered grade school beforeendeavoring to complete her own formal education. Although she had not finished high school, the largely autodidactic Smith was permitted to take classes at the university, and she concentrated her studies there in journalism, drama, writing and literature. She capped her education by winning the Avery Hopkins Award for work in drama, and did a three-year course in playwriting at the Yale Drama School.

After stints writing features for a Detroit newspaper, reading plays for the Federal Theatre Project, and acting in summer stock, Smith landed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina under the auspices of the W.P.A. She and her first husband divorced in 1938. In 1943, she married Joe Jones, a writer, journalist, and associate editor of the Chapel Hill Weekly, while he was serving as a private in the wartime army. That same year, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, her first novel, was published.

The prestige of writing a best-selling, critically lauded book brought assignments from the New York Times Magazine, for which she wrote both light-hearted and serious commentary. In a December 1943 piece called "Why Brooklyn is that Way," Smith donned the mantle of her childhood borough's unofficial champion. Her perceptions at once encapsulate one of the core themes of her novel and answer some of her more urbane critics. "Brooklyn is the small town — but on a gigantic scale — that the New Yorker ran away from," she wrote. "In jeering at Brooklyn's mores and ideology, your New Yorker may be trying to exorcise his own small-town background."

Although most remembered for the phenomenal success of that first book, Smith wrote other novels, including Tomorrow Will Be Better (1947), Maggie-Now (1958), and Joy in the Morning (1963). She also had a long career as a dramatist, writing one-act and full-length plays for which she received both the Rockefeller Fellowship and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship. She died in 1972.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Public Library

One of the books of the century.

New York Times

A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life...If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience...It is a poignant and deeply understanding story of childhood and family relationships. The Nolans lived in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn from 1902 until 1919...Their daughter Francie and their son Neely knew more than their fair share of the privations and sufferings that are the lot of a great city's poor. Primarily this is Francie's book. She is a superb feat of characterization, an imaginative, alert, resourceful child. And Francie's growing up and beginnings of wisdom are the substance of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Orville Prescott - New York Times

A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and a true one. It cuts right to the heart of life.

Robert Cornfield

...Smith has a treasure lode and...in this one book she gives all of it away....The civilization of Smith's Williamsburg exists in very few living memories....when even these isolated signposts are gone, the spirit of the book, the lives and struggles it celebrates, will be with us, reminding us of who we were and who we still are. -- The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times