Betty Smith on her inspiration

An interesting footnote to the writing of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the fact that Betty Smith attributes its inspiration to another author on my list. She tells the story on the back of the book’s jacket cover, written in 1943: “Six years ago I was living in Brooklyn and working in a Federal Theatre show in New York City. I was held up one night on account of dress rehearsal. Walking to the subway, I passed a still-open bookstore. I knew I couldn’t afford it, but I bought a book anyhow. I took it to bed with me and began reading it. I finished it at dawn. The book inspired me, because before I went to sleep, I penciled a brief, half-page outline on the last page and headed it ‘Notes on a Novel I’ll Write Someday.’…I had absolutely forgotten I had ever written that outline. Yet, six years later in the writing of the novel, I followed that outline faithfully. The book? Thomas Wolfe’s Of Time and the River.”