NOVEL THOUGHTS
………
1943
(available in paperback from HarperPerennial, 1998)
BETTY SMITH drew on her childhood to depict the slums of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in the early part of the twentieth century in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Smith’s bestselling novel chronicles the lives and struggles of the Nolan family. Uneducated and poor and the children of immigrants, Katie and Johnny marry and then struggle to raise their children, Francie and Neeley. Katie is self-reliant and proud (from a line of women “made of thin invisible steel”). As she scrubs floors and works odd jobs to keep her family afloat in the face of her husband’s bouts with alcoholism and unemployment, Katie is sustained by her dream of a better life for her children.
Francie, a budding writer with a passion for reading, is at the center of the novel. Francie’s imagination provides an escape from the hardships of her life in Brooklyn: poverty, hunger, alcoholism, violence, prejudice, and the death of her beloved father. Through her wisdom and perseverance, she achieves her mother’s dream: success through education.
Smith vividly portrays the scarcity of food for the Nolan family. As the novel begins, Francie and Neeley scavenge the streets of Brooklyn for odds and ends to trade to the junk man for pennies, which they use to buy food. Most of their meals are derived from “amazing things” their resourceful mother could make with stale bread: bread pudding, fried bread, bread and meatballs.
The Nolans’ one luxury is coffee, which Katie flavors with chicory and reheats throughout the day. Francie prefers the smell and warmth of the coffee to drinking it. Seeing the untouched coffee poured down the drain, Francie’s aunts criticize her mother for being wasteful. Katie explains that she allows her children to throw away coffee so they won’t feel so poor:
If it makes her feel better to throw it away, rather than to drink it, all right. I think it’s good that people like us can waste something once in a while and get the feeling of how it would be to have lots of money and not have to worry about scrounging.
Francie longs for fruits and sweets, but obeys her mother’s rule: “Don’t buy candy or cake if you have a penny.” When the Nolans had bread and potatoes too many times at home, Francie’s thoughts were of sour pickles, dripping with flavor. She would buy a large pickle from the Jewish pickle vendor, which she nibbled on throughout the day. “After a day of pickle, the bread and potatoes tasted good again,” says Francie.
“The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life,” writes Smith in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. “They are his contact with the supplies that keep life going; they hold the beauty that his soul longs for; they hold the unattainable that he can only dream and wish for.”
At the window of a bakery in her neighborhood, Francie likes to stop and admire “beautiful charlotte russes with red candied cherries on their whipped cream tops for those who were rich enough to buy.”
When Francie writes stories about her father and his shortcomings, her teacher, Miss Garnder, suggests that Francie write about less “sordid” topics—that “poverty, starvation and drunkenness are ugly subjects to choose.” Francie crafts a new story featuring Sherry Nola, a “girl conceived, born and brought up in sweltering luxury.” In her story, Francie’s new heroine asks her maid what the cook is preparing for dinner. “I’d like to see a lot of simple desserts and choose my dinner from among them, please bring me a dozen charlotte russes, some strawberry shortcake and a quart of ice cream …” As Francie writes these words, a drop of water falls on her paper: “It was merely her mouth watering. She was very, very hungry.”
Finding sustenance in stale bread and coffee in her kitchen, Francie rereads the passage and discovers that she has written another story about being hungry, only “twisted in a round-about silly way,” and she destroys her new novel.
For Francie, a charlotte russe is an unattainable dessert, ogled through fancy bakery windows or served in elegant homes. Charlotte russe is made in a mold lined with liqueur-soaked ladyfingers and filled with Bavarian cream. According to Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy, Jr., authors of The Brooklyn Cookbook (Knopf, 1991), charlotte russe, “Brooklyn’s ambrosia,” was ubiquitous in Brooklyn during the early part of the twentieth century—sold from pushcarts on the corners as well as in bakeries. “To old time Brooklynites, a charlotte russe was a round of sponge cake topped with sweetened whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, and sometimes a maraschino cherry, surrounded by a frilled cardboard holder with a round of cardboard on the bottom,” write Stallworth and Kennedy. Charlotte russe had a variety of pronunciations in Brooklyn, among them “charley roose” and “charlotte roosh.”
Historians debate the origin of the dessert. Some say the French chef Marie-Antoine Carême created the dessert for his Russian employer, Czar Alexander, while others say the dish was named for Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. Either way, our charlotte russe is a treat fit for a king (or queen). This recipe, from the Larchwood Inn in Wakefield, Rhode Island, is adapted from Best Recipes from New England Inns, compiled by Sandra Taylor (Yankee Press, 1991).
¼ cup kirsch (cherry brandy) 2 tablespoons juice from maraschino cherries 2 3-ounce packages ladyfingers 3 tablespoons instant coffee powder ½ cup boiling water 12 ounces semisweet chocolate 6 eggs, separated |
½ cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon almond extract 1½ cups heavy cream Maraschino cherries for garnish Sweetened Whipped Cream for topping (see below) |
Combine the kirsch and cherry juice in a small bowl, then brush the flat side of the ladyfingers with the mixture. Line the side of a 9-inch springform pan with ladyfingers, brushed side facing in. Line the bottom with the remaining ladyfingers, brushed side up (overlapping them if necessary).
Dissolve the instant coffee in the boiling water. Set aside. Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler and set aside.
Beat the egg yolks with an electric mixer at high speed until foamy, then add the sugar gradually, beating until thick. Reduce the speed and add the vanilla and almond extracts, coffee, and melted chocolate.
In a large mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Stir 1 cup of egg whites into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the remaining whites.
In another bowl, whip the heavy cream until soft peaks form, and fold it into chocolate mixture.
Pour the mixture on top of the ladyfingers in the prepared pan. Freeze until firm, 4–6 hours. Before serving, garnish with a ring of maraschino cherries. Serve each piece with a dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream.
Yield: 10 servings
NOTE: For best results, chill a medium-size metal bowl and beaters from electric mixer for at least 1 hour before using.
1 cup heavy cream 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract |
With mixer, beat together heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla in bowl until stiff peaks form. Do not overbeat. Serve immediately.
NOVEL THOUGHTS
Christy Sommerhauser’s Wichita, Kansas, book club comprises educators, nurses, and stay-at-home moms whose goal is to read books they might not pick up on their own.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a book Sommerhauser had always wanted to read, is “an older book that feels modern,” she says. It became her favorite, as it did for many others in her group. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn reminds us why we love reading, how empowering it can be, and how it takes you places by letting you escape the reality of everyday life—exactly what I try to teach my first-graders about the pleasures of reading,” says Sommerhauser. The novel provoked a discussion of relationships with parents, spouses, and significant others, and attitudes toward education. “Francie put great value in education, which appealed to our group,” says Sommerhauser.
“Most of us grew up middle class,” says Sommerhauser, “and few of us experienced the extreme poverty that these characters did. We discussed how poverty made Francie stronger and more determined to take control of her life.”
Sommerhauser did find several similarities between herself and Francie, the book’s protagonist. Like Francie, Sommerhauser didn’t own many books as a child and spent hours in the library. “As second oldest of ten children, my visits to the library and time spent reading offered escape, just as they did for Francie,” says Sommerhauser.
The group thought Betty Smith was “forward thinking” and the voice of the book felt modern. “Even though it was written many years ago, in 1943, you could tell Smith believed in the power of women!” says Sommerhauser.
