“Serene”: a word you could use for Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. “Melancholic”; a better word, but you couldn’t say that about Williamsburg in Brooklyn. “Meadow,” again, was a nice word and “Shenandoah” sounded beautiful, but neither of those fit Brooklyn either. “Serene” was the only word that suited it; especially on a summer Saturday afternoon. Late in the afternoon, the sun slanted down onto the grassy yard of Francie Nolan’s house and warmed the worn wooden fence. Looking at the beam of sunlight, Francie felt the same sweet sensation she always got from remembering the poem they recited at school. In this ancient forest the pines and hemlocks whisper, with moss for beards and green clothes, standing like old druids, dim in the twilight. The only tree in Francie’s yard was neither pine nor hemlock. Pointed leaves growing on green stems and spreading like rays from the branch formed a tree that looked like a cluster of open green umbrellas. Some called it the Tree of Heaven. Wherever its seed fell, a tree would grow, striving to reach the sky. It sprouted in fenced-in lots and through piles of discarded garbage and was the only tree that could take root even in cement. It grew lush, but only in poor neighborhoods. If you went for a walk on a Sunday afternoon and reached a beautiful, well-kept neighborhood, you might see such a little tree through the iron gate of a yard and know that soon this part of Brooklyn would become a working-class district. The tree knew. It had come here first. Then, slowly, many poor foreigners arrived and the old, quiet red-brick houses were divided and shared into apartments, feather beds hung from the windowsills to air out, and the Tree of Heaven flourished.
14
78
€
Delivery
by Mon, 06 Jul
14,00 €
shipping cost
Sent from Greece
