American · b. 1896
Betty Smith was an American author best remembered for her beloved coming-of-age novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a tender and enduring portrait of an immigrant family's struggles and hopes.
Betty Smith grew up in the working-class, immigrant world of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and drew directly on that experience for her fiction.
Her first novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), follows young Francie Nolan and her family through poverty and hardship in early-twentieth-century Brooklyn, illuminated by resilience, love, and the redemptive power of reading and imagination. An immediate and enduring bestseller, it has become a beloved American classic. She also wrote Joy in the Morning and other novels.
Smith is cherished for the warmth, honesty, and humanity of her portrait of working-class American life and the dreams that sustain it.
by Betty Smith
Betty Smith's beloved coming-of-age classic. Francie Nolan grows up poor but hungry for life and learning in the Williamsburg tenements of early-twentieth-century Brooklyn, in a tender, unsentimental portrait of an immigrant family's struggles, dreams, and resilience.
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