by Jessica Schneider

Created on: April 10, 2009

"And without true modesty, I am a world famous writer. A hundred years after I'm dead, people will still be reading, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."'
-Betty Smith in a letter to her granddaughter

Although a hundred years has not passed since Betty Smith's death in January of 1972, as of yet she seems to have been right in her assessment. With more than 35 years since her death, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has elevated into the rankings as one of the greatest classics of all time. And this is the first published biography ever written about Smith, which I have the pleasure of reviewing.

Just to give a little background, it took me several years to finally getting around to reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, mainly because of its faulty reputation of being a "young girl's novel" or being too "excessively sentimental." Ironically, it has much in common with my experience regarding the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life: a film that also took me years to finally sit down and watch because I had fallen into the trap of believing that it too was mere "corn." Yet these assessments couldn't have been more inaccurate. It wasn't until I finally read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that I had to wonder why no biography had yet been written (or at least published) about the author of such a great novel, and the reason was probably due to the book's flawed reputation as well as the mislabeling of Betty Smith as a mere "woman's writer."

But with time, all this is changing. I highly recommend this first and as of yet, only published biography to those who have read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, for it is well known that the book is based on Smith's real life experiences in poor working class Brooklyn. Those who came away from the novel desperately wanting to know what happened to Smith in her later years, well now is your chance. Valerie Raleigh Yow covers from Smith's birth to her death all in a narrative style that reads more like a story and successfully avoids falling into "dryness" by not overloading the reader with mere facts and dates.

The book covers Smith's early Brooklyn years, addressing some of the similarities and differences between Smith's real life and that of the novel. We learn of her ambivalent feelings she has towards her mother and the closer connection she feels for her father, and how her mother would often become annoyed with the young Betty for "asking too many questions" when really the young child only wanted her mother to talk to her. Just as in the novel, Betty

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