Literature Library study guide
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
A coming-of-age novel about Francie Nolan, a book-loving girl whose family faces poverty, alcoholism, loss, and hard choices in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn.
- Literary form
- Novel
- First published
- 1943
- Literary period
- Early 20th century
- Region / tradition
- Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, United States
- Original language
- English
What happens in this work?
Set in the tenements of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the novel follows Francie Nolan from childhood toward adolescence. Francie lives with her practical mother, Katie; her charming but unreliable father, Johnny; and her younger brother, Neeley. The family has little money, but Francie finds wonder in ordinary neighborhood life: the library, school, games, street vendors, work, and the view from the fire escape.
Smith does not tell the story as a simple sequence of Francie’s successes. The novel pauses to show the histories of Francie’s parents and grandparents, especially the difficult choices that shape Katie and Johnny before Francie is born. This wider structure shows that the Nolan children inherit both love and hardship. Their poverty is not a personal failure; it grows from low wages, limited opportunities, prejudice, illness, and unstable work.
As Francie grows older, she becomes more alert to the unfairness around her. School can offer knowledge, but it can also humiliate poor children. Work gives her some independence, but it exposes her to adult power and danger. Johnny’s alcoholism brings pain and uncertainty to the household, even while Francie deeply loves his gentleness and imagination.
The later chapters bring major losses and changes. Johnny’s death forces Katie and the children to adjust to a future without him, and the birth of Francie’s baby brother, Laurie, adds both pressure and hope. Francie begins to leave childhood behind through work, education, and a changing understanding of her parents. The ending is hopeful but not easy: growing up means carrying grief forward rather than escaping it.
What was happening when it was written?
Published in 1943 but set around the turn of the twentieth century, the novel looks back at immigrant and working-class life in Brooklyn. The Library of Congress describes it as a socially conscious novel concerned with poverty, alcoholism, gender roles, lost innocence, and the American Dream. Smith knew Williamsburg and its library as a child, a connection that helps explain why Francie’s reading life is so central to the novel.
Who matters, and why?
Francie Nolan
Francie is observant, imaginative, and intensely committed to reading and learning. Her point of view makes small events feel important, from household rituals to humiliations at school. She does not simply represent innocence: as she grows, she notices poverty, unequal treatment, sexuality, and violence. Her development measures the cost of becoming independent without losing her capacity for wonder.
Katie Nolan
Katie is Francie’s mother and the family’s organizer, earning money, planning carefully, and making painful decisions when resources are scarce. Her sternness can make Francie feel less favored than Neeley, yet the novel gradually reveals that Katie’s choices are often acts of protection. She represents practical endurance, but Smith also shows the emotional price of always having to be the responsible adult.
Johnny Nolan
Johnny is Francie’s affectionate father, a singing waiter whose alcoholism keeps him from providing reliably for the family. Francie treasures his warmth because he treats her imagination seriously and gives her emotional attention. The novel refuses to make him only lovable or only blameworthy: his drinking harms Katie and the children, while his tenderness helps explain why Francie cannot reduce him to that harm.
Big ideas to track
Poverty shapes choices without defining human worth
The Nolans’ lack of money affects food, housing, schooling, clothing, work, and even which child can receive certain opportunities. Smith makes these pressures concrete through daily routines instead of treating poverty as background scenery. Yet the family members still make meaningful choices, care for one another, argue, dream, and create joy. The novel asks readers to see both structural hardship and personal dignity.
Education and reading create a form of freedom
Francie’s library visits and hunger for books give her access to places, ideas, and futures beyond her apartment and neighborhood. Reading cannot immediately solve the family’s financial problems, but it trains her to observe closely and imagine alternatives. The novel contrasts this private intellectual freedom with schools and workplaces that sometimes judge children by class, accent, clothing, or gender.
Love is mixed with disappointment and survival
The Nolan family loves one another, but love does not erase alcoholism, financial fear, favoritism, or grief. Francie’s feelings about Johnny and Katie are especially complicated because each parent gives her something the other cannot. By allowing affection and resentment to exist together, Smith presents family loyalty as a difficult practice rather than a sentimental guarantee.
How the writing works
Expansive, episodic structure
Rather than moving quickly from one major plot point to the next, the novel builds its world through episodes about relatives, neighbors, school, work, and neighborhood customs. Some sections step away from Francie’s immediate present to tell earlier family history. This structure makes Brooklyn feel like a crowded social world and shows that Francie’s life has been shaped by people and events she did not choose.
Close but flexible point of view
Francie’s perceptions guide much of the novel, especially when she is young and tries to understand adult behavior. However, Smith also enters the experiences of Katie, Johnny, and earlier generations. This shift matters because readers can recognize facts Francie does not yet understand, including the pressures behind Katie’s choices and the depth of Johnny’s struggles.
The tree as a recurring symbol
The tree growing in a harsh urban setting symbolizes persistence, but it is not a simple promise that effort always wins. Like Francie, it exists amid crowded buildings, poverty, and damage. Its survival helps connect the novel’s final movement to endurance and renewal, while the difficult events of the plot keep the symbol from becoming falsely cheerful.
Moments to notice while you read
Beginning: Francie’s Saturday reading routine and the neighborhood around her apartment
What to notice: Notice how Francie’s attention moves between books, the fire escape, the tree, and the noisy life below.
Why it matters: This opening establishes that Francie’s imagination grows from close observation of her real surroundings, not from a wish to deny poverty.
Early chapters: Katie’s rules for saving money and managing the household
What to notice: Track the precise rules Katie makes about food, savings, rent, and what the children may expect.
Why it matters: These details show that poverty is experienced as constant calculation, and they complicate any quick judgment that Katie is merely cold or controlling.
Early-middle: The chapters that look back to the Rommely women and Johnny’s past
What to notice: Compare the family histories with the children’s present circumstances, especially the different kinds of advice given to daughters and sons.
Why it matters: The backward-looking sections reveal how gender expectations, migration, and family stories shape Katie’s parenting long before Francie can understand it.
Middle: Francie’s experiences at school and the library
What to notice: Watch for the contrast between institutions that rank, shame, or overlook children and the library’s broader invitation to learn.
Why it matters: Smith presents education as unequal in practice, while still showing why knowledge and reading remain vital sources of agency for Francie.
Later chapters: Francie’s entry into paid work and her frightening encounter with an adult man
What to notice: Notice how the tone changes when Francie leaves the protected routines of childhood and encounters adult power directly.
Why it matters: This section marks a painful loss of innocence and shows why independence for a young working-class girl can involve danger as well as opportunity.
Ending: The family’s preparations for change after Johnny’s death
What to notice: Pay attention to what the family carries forward—memories, responsibilities, reading, work, and plans—rather than expecting a tidy resolution.
Why it matters: The ending defines hope as continued growth after loss. Francie’s future is possible because she remembers the past without being permanently trapped by it.
Questions to test your understanding
Answer in your own words. Then point to a specific moment in the work that supports your answer.
- How do Francie’s library visits differ from her experiences in the classroom, and what does that contrast suggest about who gets to feel welcome in education?
- Why does Smith include long chapters about Katie’s mother and the Rommely family history instead of keeping the novel only in Francie’s present?
- How should readers judge Johnny’s role in the Nolan family when his affection for Francie exists alongside the harm caused by his alcoholism?
- What do Katie’s decisions about money, schooling, and Neeley reveal about the difference between fairness and survival in the Nolan household?
- How does Francie’s move into paid work change the kinds of risks she faces compared with the risks of her childhood?
- At the ending, how does the tree connect Francie’s personal growth to the novel’s larger view of Brooklyn, hardship, and endurance?
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