Betty Smith was an American playwright and novelist. In the late 1930s, Smith began to shift her attention from play writing to attempting a novel. Encouraged by her longtime friend, playwright Bob Finch, as well as her writing group, she turned her eye toward a milieu with which she was familiar: the tenements and streets of Brooklyn. In total, Smith wrote four published novels during her lifetime, three of which take Brooklyn as a setting. Her first novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, was published in 1943. The book became an immediate bestseller and catapulted Smith to fame. In "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," Smith eloquently captures the struggles and aspirations of a young girl coming of age in early 20th-century Brooklyn. The novel explores themes of resilience, family, and the pursuit of dreams against the backdrop of challenging urban life.