Betty Smith · 1943 · coming-of-age

Betty Smith's 1943 novel, drawn from her own childhood in the same streets. Francie Nolan is eleven in the summer of 1912, the daughter of a janitress and a singing waiter who drinks, and the book is six years of Williamsburg tenements, library books and not quite enough to eat - and a girl who gets out.

1. 1
   Bogart Street

   One of the flats the Nolans are moved on from, this one for noise - a family that changes address the way other families change furniture, always within the same few blocks and always a little further down.

2. 2
   Lorimer Street

   The top floor, no stoop because a shop takes the ground floor, no bathroom and a lavatory in the hall shared with another family - and a tree in the yard that grows out of cement and cannot be killed.

3. 3
   The Leonard Library

   Francie reads a book a day and is working through the alphabet, and asks the librarian each week for something good - and the branch on Devoe Street now has a plaque on it saying so.

4. 4
   Grand Street

   Cheap Charlie's and the junk shop where Saturday's rags and metal turn into pennies, and Gimpy's candy store next door - the small economy of a childhood, described to the cent.

5. 5
   The Flushing Avenue El

   At fourteen she is working in Manhattan and waiting at the foot of the elevated station with her first week's pay in an envelope - five dollars, and the moment the book quietly changes direction.

6. 6
   Manhattan

   Across the bridge her father crossed for work, to the jobs that pay: reading press clippings, then a teletype machine - a girl who never finished high school earning more than her father ever did.

7. 7
   Canarsie

   The trolley to the shore and the pier at the end of the line, which is as far as a Brooklyn family goes for a day out - and about as far from Williamsburg as Francie can imagine getting, until she can.

8. 8
   Ann Arbor

   She passes the entrance examinations without a diploma and leaves for the University of Michigan in 1918 - Smith's own destination, and the answer to the tree in the yard that nobody planted and nobody could stop.