Betty Smith\'s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn captured the imagination of readers in 1943.
Here, in the first published biography of Betty Smith, th.
Betty Smith admitted that Francie was herself and that her mother, father, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were the inspiration for the book\'s characters.
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\'s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn captured the imagination of readers in 1943