A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

JOHNNY WAS ONE FOR TAKING NOTIONS. HE’D TAKE A NOTION THAT life was too much for him and start drinking heavier to forget it.

Francie dreaded the drinking periods—not on moral grounds but because Papa wasn’t a man she knew then. He wouldn’t talk to her or to anybody. He looked at her with the eyes of a stranger.

They sounded like words that came in a can; the freshness was cooked out of them.

and somehow, while he wasn’t good-looking, he was nicer than good-looking.

But this tree in the yard—this tree that men chopped down…this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump—this tree lived! It lived! And nothing could destroy it.