Selected as one of the Books of the Century by The New York Public Library

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is a novel by Betty Smith first published in 1943. It relates the coming-of-age story of its main character, Francie Nolan, and her Austrian/Irish-American family struggling against poverty in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City.

The novel is set in the first and second decades of the 20th century. The book was an immense success, a nationwide best-seller that was distributed to servicemen overseas. It was also adapted into a popular motion picture, the first feature film directed by Elia Kazan.

Much of the book can be thought of as thinly disguised autobiography or as a Bildungsroman. Many of the characters derive from actual inhabitants of Williamsburg with whom the author grew up.

The main metaphor of the book is the hardy Tree of Heaven, of Asian origin, now considered invasive, and common in the vacant lots of New York City.

Browse Inside: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn By Betty Smith

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

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Betty Smith was born Elisabeth Wehner on December 15, 1896, the same day (though five years earlier) as her fictional heroine Francie Nolan. The daughter of German immigrants, she grew up poor in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the very world she recreates with such meticulous detail in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Smith wrote many novels and 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.

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