A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is not the sort of book that can be reduced to its plot line. But those things happen in the slow, sure, meandering way that they happen in the slow, sure, meandering river of real existence. Of course that's not really accurate: Everything that can happen in life happens, from birth and death to marriage and bigamy. In its nearly five hundred pages, nothing much happens. “ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn illustrates the limitations of plot description. It’s a coming-of-age story that follows teenaged Francie Nolan as she grows into adulthood in hardscrabble Brooklyn, New York.Īs author Anna Quindlen notes in her excellent foreword to the 2001 edition, the story itself defies easy summation: Betty Smith’s classic, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, has been capturing hearts since it was first published 80 years ago in 1943.
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