Description:

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn": Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely--to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. She is her father's child--romantic and hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive. Betty Smith's poignant, honest novel created a big stir when it was first published... --Emilie Coulter at Amazon.com. "Maggie Now": This book begins its story before Maggie Now's birth. It introduces her contrary father, Patrick, as a young man in Ireland and her gentle mother, Mary, as a school teacher in New York at the turn of the century. They meet in New York after Patrick flees Ireland and comes to America to work for Mary's father. Maggie Now grows up attending Catholic school, rearing her younger brother and yearning for love and a family of her own. -- cassandraandvixen at Amazon.com.