A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Summary: Betty Smith’s Classic
Introduction
In the summer of 1912, an eleven-year-old girl named Francie Nolan climbs onto a third-floor fire escape in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a library book in her hands.
Below her, children drag burlap sacks of scrap metal to the junkman for pennies, and a tree called the Tree of Heaven pushes up through cracked cement in the yard.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith follows Francie from that fire escape through six years of tenement life, school, work, and loss. Her mother scrubs floors for free rent.
Her father sings beautifully and drinks too much.
The book traces how a family holds together when money runs out and how a girl with a library card builds a life beyond her block.
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TL;DR: What This Book Is Really About
A quiet, episodic portrait of one family’s survival in early 1900s Brooklyn.
There is no single villain and no single climax — the pressure comes from rent, hunger, illness, and alcohol, and the plot moves through small victories and quiet devastations.
- Central figure: Francie Nolan, who reads her way through the public library and eventually into college.
- Core tension: Katie Nolan’s hard practicality versus Johnny Nolan’s warmth and unreliability.
- Key symbol: The Tree of Heaven, which grows only in poor districts and grows back after being cut down.
- Emotional register: Warm but unsentimental. The book names poverty plainly and refuses pity.
- Shape of the story: A coming-of-age chronicle that ends with departure rather than arrival.
Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Mary Frances “Francie” Nolan | The protagonist, who grows from age eleven to seventeen in Williamsburg and works toward a college education. |
| Johnny Nolan | Francie’s father, a union singing waiter whose alcoholism shapes the family’s finances and future. |
| Katie Rommely Nolan | Francie’s mother, a janitress who scrubs three tenement buildings to keep the family housed and fed. |
| Cornelius “Neeley” Nolan | Francie’s younger brother, who resembles Johnny and is favored by Katie. |
| Annie Laurie Nolan | Francie’s baby sister, born five months after Johnny’s death. |
| Mary Rommely | Katie’s illiterate Austrian mother, who advises her daughters on saving money and raising children. |
| Thomas Rommely | Katie’s father, who disowns his daughters for marrying foreigners. |
| Aunt Sissy | Katie’s eldest sister, who loves children and takes in an infant before settling with her husband Steve. |
| Aunt Evy | Katie’s middle sister, who works odd jobs while supporting her husband Willie. |
| Uncle Willie Flittman | Evy’s husband, a milkman who eventually abandons his family. |
| Sergeant Michael McShane | A wealthy retired police officer and politician who marries Katie and funds the children’s education. |
| Ben Blake | A high school senior who tutors Francie through her summer college courses. |
| Lee Rynor | A soldier from Alabama with whom Francie falls in love during World War I. |
| Mr. McGarrity | A saloon keeper who hires Francie and Neeley for evening chores after Johnny dies. |
| Miss Garnder | Francie’s English teacher, who rejects compositions about poverty as unsuitable. |
| Carney | The junkman who buys rags, paper, and metal from neighborhood children. |
| Cheap Charlie | The owner of the penny candy store on Francie’s route. |
| Joanna | An unwed mother in the neighborhood who is publicly harassed by local women. |
| Florry Wendy | A ten-year-old girl reading on a fire escape in the novel’s final scene. |
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Summary
Spoilers follow.
The novel opens on an ordinary Saturday in the summer of 1912. Eleven-year-old Francie Nolan and her younger brother Neeley collect scrap paper, rags, tin foil, and metal across Williamsburg and sell it to Carney the junkman for pennies.
Francie puts most of her earnings into a tin-can bank nailed to the closet floor and spends a few cents on stale bread and a peppermint wafer. She is working her way through the library’s shelves in alphabetical order, one book at a time.
At home, her father Johnny is a handsome twenty-eight-year-old singing waiter, beloved by his children and consumed by alcoholism. Her mother Katie scrubs the stairs of three tenement buildings to earn free rent for the family.
The novel then moves backward to 1900. Nineteen-year-old Johnny Nolan meets seventeen-year-old Katie Rommely, and Katie falls for his singing and dancing, taking him from her friend Hildy O’Dair.
They marry on New Year’s Day 1901, and Katie’s Austrian father disowns her for marrying an Irishman. Francie is born in December 1901, and Neeley follows a year later.
Katie’s mother, Mary Rommely, offers her daughter a set of rules for survival. She tells Katie to save pennies in a hidden bank toward the purchase of land, to read the Bible and Shakespeare to her children daily, and to nourish their imaginations with folklore.
Mary also argues that suffering and disappointment build character. Katie begins trading tenderness for pragmatism as Johnny’s drinking makes him an unreliable provider, and the family moves repeatedly for janitorial work.
Back in 1912, Francie attends a crowded public school she finds cruel and filthy. With Johnny’s help, she uses a false address from a nicer neighborhood to transfer to a better school, where she flourishes.
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During the leanest weeks, Katie invents the “North Pole” game, pretending the family are Arctic explorers rationing food until rescue. On Christmas Eve, Francie and Neeley win a ten-foot spruce by standing firm when a vendor hurls it at them.
When a neighborhood predator corners fourteen-year-old Francie in her tenement hallway, Katie shoots him with a revolver borrowed from a bank watchman. She saves her daughter and earns the neighborhood’s respect.
In December 1915, Johnny is expelled from the Waiters’ Union because of his drinking. He wanders into the winter cold, is found unconscious in a doorway, and dies three days later of acute alcoholism and pneumonia at thirty-four.
Katie, three months pregnant, takes $18.62 from the tin-can bank and borrows more to buy a cemetery plot in Cypress Hills. She tells her children that although the bank is destroyed, the family now owns a piece of land.
In May 1916, Katie gives birth to Annie Laurie, named after Johnny’s favorite ballad. Mr. McGarrity hires Francie and Neeley for evening chores at the saloon, providing income until they graduate from eighth grade in June 1916.
On graduation day, Francie receives red roses with a card in Johnny’s handwriting. Aunt Sissy reveals that a year before his death, Johnny had given her two dollars and written cards to be delivered on his children’s graduation day.
Francie, fourteen, goes to work instead of high school. She stems artificial flowers until a seasonal layoff, then takes a job at a Press Clipping Bureau in Manhattan.
Her reading speed moves her quickly from routing boy to city reader at twenty dollars a week. Katie insists Neeley return to high school but lets Francie keep working, and Francie later adds a night shift as a teletype operator at the Communications Corporation.
At sixteen, Francie marks “privately educated” on a form and registers for summer college courses in Brooklyn Heights. Ben Blake, a brilliant high school senior, tutors her until she passes her subjects.
When World War I begins, Francie falls in love with Lee Rynor, a soldier on his last leave before shipping to France. After an evening walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, Lee asks her to marry him when he returns.
Days later, a letter from Lee’s fiancée in Alabama reveals that he married her as soon as he arrived home. Katie offers plain comfort, telling Francie that time will dull the pain but that first love never fully disappears.
Sergeant Michael McShane, a wealthy retired police officer who has loved Katie for years, proposes. He promises to support the family, adopt baby Laurie, and send Francie and Neeley to college, and Katie accepts.
The story closes in the autumn of 1918 on the eve of Katie’s wedding and the family’s departure from the Grand Street flat. Francie has passed her entrance examinations for the University of Michigan.
Before leaving, she buys out Cheap Charlie’s prize board so every neighborhood child wins a ticket, and she returns her library card, noticing pink wild asters in the brown bowl on the desk.
At the flat, Neeley dresses in a blue suit and sings “Molly Malone” in a voice like their father’s. Across the yard, a ten-year-old girl named Florry Wendy sits on a fire escape reading a book with a piece of candy, as Francie once did.
The Tree of Heaven in the yard has been chopped down, but a new trunk has grown from its roots and is reaching for the sky. Francie whispers “Good-bye, Francie” to her former self, closes the window, and prepares for her new life.
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Beneath the Surface: What the Novel Is Built Around
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| Resilience and survival | The Tree of Heaven grows out of cement in tenement yards and regrows from a cut stump. Katie scrubs floors, rations food, and refuses charity even in the worst months. |
| Poverty and class inequality | Children sell scrap for pennies, families buy stale bread at Losher’s, and clinic doctors speak to the poor with contempt. Francie uses a false address to reach a better school. |
| Education and literacy | Mary Rommely requires daily reading of the Bible and Shakespeare. Francie reads through the library alphabetically, passes college courses without a diploma, and earns admission to the University of Michigan. |
| Family dynamics | Johnny gives Francie warmth and validation. Katie supplies discipline and favors Neeley to keep him from his father’s fate. Francie builds independence largely on her own. |
| Women and matriarchy | The Rommely women make household decisions and hold the family together through crises. The neighborhood’s treatment of the unwed mother Joanna shows women enforcing social judgment on each other. |
| Loss of innocence | Francie recognizes her father’s alcoholism, faces violence in her hallway, loses Johnny, enters the adult workplace, and endures her first romantic betrayal. |
Books Like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: Four sisters navigate financial hardship, artistic ambition, and personal growth. It is cited in the foreword of Smith’s novel and shares its focus on a striving young writer.
Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith: Smith’s own semi-autobiographical novel about a young Brooklyn couple marrying early and pursuing education while poor.
Maggie-Now by Betty Smith: Another Brooklyn-set novel by the same author, centered on immigrant family dynamics and female self-reliance.
Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska: A young Jewish immigrant girl on the Lower East Side fights patriarchal expectations and poverty to gain an education.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt: A memoir of growing up in extreme poverty with a struggling mother and a charming, alcoholic father.
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Coming-of-Age Novel / Bildungsroman / Social Realism / Historical Fiction / Semi-Autobiographical
- Core Narrative Tropes: Rags to respectability, intellectual awakening, the beloved unreliable parent, the indomitable matriarch, overcoming environmental adversity
- Tone & Atmosphere: Lyrical, nostalgic, gritty, unsentimental, warm
- Primary Conflict: Francie Nolan and her family against systemic urban poverty, social degradation, and the instability caused by Johnny’s alcoholism
- Pacing Style: Episodic and character-driven, told chronologically across 1912–1918 with a flashback section covering 1900–1907
- ISBN: 978-0060001940 (ISBN-10: 0060001941)
- Pages: 512
- Book Structure: 55 chapters divided into 5 books
Betty Smith: The Author Behind the Tenements
Betty Smith was born in Brooklyn in 1896 to Austrian immigrant parents, and she grew up in the kind of Williamsburg tenement she later wrote about.
She left school young, worked a series of jobs, and eventually studied at the University of Michigan, the same destination she gives Francie Nolan.
She worked as a playwright, journalist, and editor before publishing A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in 1943. The novel became a bestseller and was followed by other Brooklyn-rooted works, including Joy in the Morning and Maggie-Now.
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Memorable Quotes
“There is a part of each day that does not belong to the master but which the worker owns himself. That is good. But to own a bit of land is better; a bit of land that we may hand down to our children…that will raise us up on the face of the earth.”
“There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.”
“The difference between rich and poor,” said Francie, “is that the poor do everything with their own hands and the rich hire hands to do things. We’re not poor any more. We can pay to have some things done for us.”
“To 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.”
“By truth, we mean things like the stars always being there and the sun always rising and the true nobility of man and mother-love and love for one’s country…”
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