What happens in Book One of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Book One opens on a hot Saturday in the summer of 1912, introducing eleven-year-old Francie Nolan sitting on the fire escape of her Williamsburg tenement, reading and munching on candy she bought with a penny saved from the family’s tin-can bank. The story zooms out to paint a picture of the Brooklyn neighborhood—its bustling streets, immigrant families, and the mix of poverty and resilience—before focusing on the ailanthus tree growing in the backyard. This tree, which pushes through concrete and thrives despite neglect, becomes the novel's central symbol. We also meet Francie's younger brother Neeley, and together they collect and sell rags and scrap metal, a Saturday routine that helps boost their family's meager income. The chapter ends with Francie back on the fire escape, book in hand, as the tree offers its shade—an image of a child finding her own space amidst the struggles around her.
Analysis
Betty Smith begins not with character backstories but with the setting, which is a crucial choice. Williamsburg comes alive through a sensory mix—the fishmonger's smell, the feel of the iron fire escape, the way summer heat clings to brick—making the environment a character in its own right before any dialogue occurs. The ailanthus tree appears early and quietly, and that's intentional: Smith has faith in the image's power. The tree grows "in dirty yards," requires "neither love nor money nor kindness," and is known as "the Tree of Heaven" by those living near it. This concise description also serves as a reflection of Francie herself, as well as the immigrant working class that the novel explores.
The tone is realistic but not bleak; Smith writes with a clear-eyed kindness, recognizing poverty without romanticizing it or reducing it to mere misery. The Saturday ritual of scrap collecting is portrayed as both an adventure and a necessity, mirroring Francie's perspective—a child who turns experiences into art as a way to cope. The scene on the fire escape introduces a central conflict in the novel: the balance between intellectual life and physical existence, between imagination as a means of escape and as a source of resilience through hardship. Smith's use of free indirect discourse allows us to step into Francie's thoughts while the narration offers an adult's warm hindsight, creating the bittersweet perspective that will carry the entire story.
Key quotes from Book One
“There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it is the only tree that grows out of cement.”
Smith introduces the ailanthus in the novel's opening pages, establishing it immediately as the book's presiding symbol of resilient, unglamorous survival.
“Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world.”
Reflecting on the local library during the Saturday routine, Francie articulates the ambition that will define her character throughout the novel.
“It was a good world, thought Francie, a beautiful world.”
Closing the chapter's opening section, this moment of free indirect thought captures the tension at the heart of the novel: Francie's capacity for wonder persisting inside genuine material deprivation.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Book One
- dumbwaiter
- A small shaft or pulley-operated box built into the wall of a tenement building, used to haul garbage, deliveries, or goods between floors without using the main staircase.
- tenement
- A crowded, cheaply built apartment building in a poor urban neighborhood, typically lacking basic comforts and housing many immigrant or working-class families.