A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith is a PBS Great American Read Top 100 pick, published in 1943, and has very little to do with a tree. It is all about the characters who grab your heart, even if 1912 Williamsburg does not. The protagonist is 11-year-old Francie Nolan, whom you, as the reader, want to protect and guide as she struggles to help her brother, Neeley, in a family of first-generation immigrants plagued by poverty and alcoholism. New York City was a difficult place for a little girl with so much to offer to the world and to us.