![a tree grows in brooklyn a tree grows in brooklyn](https://sulfurbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/original-346-996x1536.jpeg)
When Johnny learns that Katie is pregnant once again, he falls into a depression that leads to his death from alcoholism-induced pneumonia on Christmas Day 1915. Johnny fails in his efforts to improve the children's minds, but Katie helps Francie grow as a person and saves her life by shooting a child-rapist/murderer who tries to attack Francie shortly before her 14th birthday. Francie enjoys learning, even in these dismal surroundings, and gets herself transferred to a better school in a different neighborhood with Johnny's support. In Book Three, the Nolans settle into their new home, and seven-year-old Francie and six-year-old Neeley begin to attend the squalid, overcrowded public school next door. The Nolans then arrive at the apartment introduced in Book One.
![a tree grows in brooklyn a tree grows in brooklyn](https://fthmb.tqn.com/fIrCNpbjmVCQ1Tez3nRpCPqjQNE=/400x400/filters:no_upscale()/51AjSADNOL-56b67a0c5f9b5829f832ebb0.jpg)
During the first seven years of their marriage, the Nolans are forced to move twice within Williamsburg, due to public disgraces caused first by Johnny's drunkenness and later by the children's Aunt Sissy's misguided efforts at babysitting them.
![a tree grows in brooklyn a tree grows in brooklyn](https://xl.movieposterdb.com/13_05/1945/38190/xl_38190_756ef5e9.jpg)
Katie makes a promise to herself that her daughter must never learn of her preference for Neeley. Kate resents Francie because the baby is constantly ill, while Neeley is more robust. Although Johnny panics and begins drinking heavily when Katie becomes pregnant with first Francie and then Neeley, Katie resolves to give her children a better life than she has known, remembering her mother's insistence that they receive a good education. Katie has very little time for sentiment, since she is the breadwinner of the family who has forsaken fantasies and dreams for survival.īook Two jumps back to 1900 and chronicles the meeting of Johnny and Katie, the teenage children of immigrants from Ireland and Austria, respectively. Francie admires him because he is handsome, talented, imaginative, and sentimental, as she is. His alcoholism has made it difficult for him to hold a steady job, and he sees himself as a disappointment to his family as a result. The family subsists on Katie's wages from cleaning apartment buildings, pennies from the children's junk-selling and odd jobs, and Johnny's irregular earnings as a singing waiter. Francie relies on her imagination and her love of reading to provide a temporary escape from the poverty that defines her daily existence. The novel is split into five "books", each covering a different period in the characters' lives.īook One opens in 1912 and introduces 11-year-old Francie Nolan, who lives in the Williamsburg tenement neighborhood of Brooklyn with her 10-year-old brother Cornelius ("Neeley" for short) and their parents, Johnny and Katie.