Betty Smith: Life of the Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
BETTY SMITH: Life of the Author of
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
By Valerie Raleigh Yow
January 2008
Hardbound $29.99
ISBN 978-0-9702249-3-4
To order, ask your local bookstore to contact Lightning Source, Inc. 1246 Heil Quaker Blvd., La Vergne, TN 37086 or order from Amazon.com.
Description
Betty Smith, August 1918 (age 22). In Richmond Hill, Brooklyn. Wearing pants? Defiant thing to do.
Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn captured the imagination of readers in 1943. Now, over sixty years since its publication, thousands of readers of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn still enter its world and identify with Francie Nolan, growing up in a tenement in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Betty Smith admitted that Francie was herself and that her mother, father, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were the inspiration for the novel’s characters. In this first published biography of Betty Smith, their real-life stories are told. The heroes in Smith’s novels—Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the office worker Margy in Tomorrow Will Be Better, the housewife Maggie in Maggie-Now, the aspiring writer Annie in Joy in the Morning—develop as self-directed, confident, strong women. These novels present an insider’s view of a blue collar world, of complex characters and psychological dynamics. Smith’s vision in her fiction was an unusual combination of no-holds-barred realism and hope, an attitude that guided her life. This tale of three cities—Brooklyn, Ann Arbor, and Chapel Hill—is wise, funny, and also sad. It is the story of a writer’s life but also the life of a daughter, lover, mother, and grandmother.
