A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

After reading this book, several people asked me what it was about. I would think for a moment and then reply, "Life."

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is set in the early 1900s and the main character, Francie Nolan, is growing up poor in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in the early 1900s. But, somehow, her story is every girl's story. It's the story of learning things about grown-ups, learning about your own family, learning how to deal with the curveballs that life pitches at you.

It's a funny story, it's a sad story, it's a historically accurate story -- but, above all else, it's a story of hope. A girl can grow up poor and come from a no-name family and still make something of herself. She can grow up with next to nothing and still be happy. We humans are tougher than we give ourselves credit for. We really need very little in order to flourish. Give us some food, books, and love and watch us grow.

As a young tree fights and claws its way out of the ground to flourish in the concrete jungle of Brooklyn, so Francie Nolan grows and learns and flourishes there. And hers is a story of love and triumph and an unquenchable lust for life and all it has to offer.

A friend let me borrow this book. Her friend gave it to her for Christmas after reading it. She read it after watching the HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers." In one scene, two soldiers relieve two other soldiers. One of the now off-duty soldiers tosses a book to his replacement, giving him something to read. "Any sex in it?" calls the recipient. "It ain't that kinda book," his friend replies. That book was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

I began reading it the day I got it and was already crying before I got to the end of the first chapter. I cried again in Chapter Three.

I didn't get to pick it up again until last Friday. I'd gone on a ski trip but wasn't able to snowboard that day, thanks to severe altitude sickness. While I waited for my Albuterol to arrive (I had to have the prescription transferred from my pharmacy back home), I powered through the book. There was one part that saddened me so much that I sobbed audibly over it for almost five minutes. At the end of the day, I was glad that I'd gotten sick because it enabled me to finish my book.

BOTTOM LINE: A great book, a must-read for anyone who's ever wondered what it means to really live.

-- Jelinas