For anyone else who has never had the pleasure of spending time with Francie, the book is, as the 2001 edition\u2019s foreword describes, a story in which nothing really happens. It is introspective, much like our protagonist. It\u2019s these quiet books that tend to make the deepest imprint on me. <\/p>\n
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“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” at a public library.Lidia Ryan<\/p>\n
But the thing is, of course, everything happens to Francie \u2014 \u201ceverything that can happen in life\u201d as the foreword puts it \u2014 as she navigates adolescence in Brooklyn from 1912 to 1918. She\u2019s the eldest child of a poor Irish-American family constantly struggling to make ends meet, saddled with familial responsibilities beyond her years. She sells scraps at the junkyard for pennies with her brother, runs errands around the neighborhood for her mother, lies about her age so she can get a full-time job. She narrowly escapes an attacker. She endures the untimely death of her loving, flawed young father. She has her first heartbreak. Her retreat: the library. <\/p>\n
All of this happens as her beloved Williamsburg, Brooklyn, changes around her, feeling smaller and more precious as the years go by. A bit over a decade ago, I lived in a fourth-floor walk-up in Williamsburg that was built in 1914; Francie would have been 13 years old. It was sort of the tail end of the millennial hipster heyday. Dunkin\u2019 and Whole Foods had already infiltrated the neighborhood, but there was not yet a Chanel boutique. American Apparel and heavily filtered Instagram posts of artisanal coffee reigned. Francie\u2019s Williamsburg is gritty, hostile, and homey \u2014 a community truly separate from Manhattan rather than a trendy overspill. In fact, Francie never even steps foot in Manhattan until her teen years, traversing the Williamsburg Bridge just as I did 100 years later. Young Francie\u2019s life is filled with summers playing in the street, the scary butcher, the bakery where she buys yesterday\u2019s stale bread. She dresses up for trick-or-treating during Thanksgiving Ragamuffin Day. She sees automobiles and horses cohabitate the roads. And she watches a Tree of Heaven grow from a crack in the sidewalk. <\/p>\n
Author Betty Smith based Francie\u2019s experiences on her own, beautifully capturing how it feels to be in that in-between age of girlhood and womanhood \u2014 a topic iconically mused upon in my coming-of-age era by Britney Spears. She writes Francie with childlike wonder and innocence among outwardly hardened adults who, we learn, still manage to retain a bit of whimsy even in the harshest of circumstances.<\/p>\n
Things no longer cost anywhere near a few pennies, especially in Williamsburg where the streets are paved with craft cocktails and Citi Bikes instead of penny candy and horse-drawn buggies. Library book pockets are obsolete. But a woman\u2019s recollection in 1943 of her coming-of-age in the 1910s still resonates today with a 30-something on her way to work.<\/p>\n
When I brought the crinkly plastic-covered book to the front desk, it was greeted by tender enthusiasm from the librarian, likely somewhere in her 60s.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh! I love this book. Francie!\u201d<\/p>\n