Katie dances with Johnny at a crowded party and decides to steal him from her best friend Hildy O'Dair.

Katie and Johnny marry, Francie is born, and Johnny loses his schoolhouse job the very next morning.

Neeley is born, and Katie secretly acknowledges to herself that she loves him more than Francie or Johnny.

Johnny goes on a three-day bender for his twenty-first birthday, pushing Katie to lock him in a room.

Ashamed of Johnny's alcoholism, Katie secures a new home by agreeing to work as the building's janitress.

A doctor at the health center calls Francie filth and says people like her should be sterilized.

Francie starts school, is beaten up on her first day, and discovers teachers treat poor children differently.

Johnny lies to school administrators so Francie can attend a better school outside their neighborhood zone.

Francie and Neeley win a ten-foot Christmas tree in the neighborhood throwing contest and drag it home bloodied.

A child molester pins Francie against the wall in the dark hallway of her building on her way home from school.

Katie grabs Johnny's gun and shoots the child molester; the family is praised in court while Johnny is charged for lacking a permit.

Johnny staggers home and confesses he has been expelled from the Union for being a bum and a drunk.

Johnny is found unconscious in a doorway and dies in the hospital from alcohol-induced pneumonia.

Katie fights to remove acute alcoholism from Johnny's death certificate and spends all the family's savings on a cemetery plot.

Sergeant McShane visits Katie with a marriage proposal and she accepts, securing a stable future for the family.

The novel opens with beautiful Katie Rommely pursuing and winning the charming but unstable singing-waiter Johnny Nolan, setting in motion a family defined by love and hardship in equal measure. As Francie and Neeley grow up in Williamsburg, Johnny's alcoholism deepens while Katie works tirelessly to keep the household from collapse. Key episodes—Francie's degradation at the health center, her transfer to a better school, and a symbolic Christmas tree victory—chart the children's resilience against poverty. The family reaches a violent crisis when a child molester attacks Francie and Katie shoots him to protect her daughter. Johnny's expulsion from the Union and his eventual death from pneumonia close out the novel's first arc. The story ends on a note of cautious hope when Sergeant McShane proposes to Katie and she accepts, promising the family a more stable future.

The Nolan family's struggle, survival, and transformation across a generation of Brooklyn poverty.

Mary Rommely visits after Francie's birth and instructs Katie to read to Francie, tell her stories, and save money for land.

Sissy nails down a tin-can milk bank for Francie and brings home a Shakespeare anthology and a stolen hotel Bible.

Sissy spends the night in the locked room with Johnny, slowly feeding him whiskey until he weeps himself calm.

Sissy steals a tricycle from a neighbor's porch and uses her charm to convince a policeman to let Francie ride it.

After Sissy causes another scandal, the Nolans move again and Johnny takes Francie to the rooftop to admire the city.

Katie swaps cleaning services with a neighbor piano teacher; soon all three Nolan children learn to play.

Francie wets herself at school because no one will let her leave; Sissy intercepts and lies to the teacher about a kidney problem.

Sissy loses another stillborn baby, and a shamed Katie decides to forgive her and reinstate her in the family.

Johnny takes Francie, Neeley, and neighbor girl Little Tilly on a disastrous rowboat trip and returns drunk with the children sick.

The school selects Francie's essay for their annual printed anthology, marking her first formal publication.

Sergeant McShane brings the Nolans an envelope of cash collected by fellow officers to honor Katie's bravery.

Saloon owner McGarrity offers Francie and Neeley after-school jobs out of his deep affection for their late father.

Katie announces she will send Neeley to high school instead of Francie, sparking a bitter and tearful confrontation.

A newspaper photo exposes Sissy's first husband's death and her bigamy; her current husband demands a legal church remarriage.

Sissy's newborn son nearly dies but is saved when hospital doctors deliver oxygen, vindicating her decision to give birth there.

From the moment Francie is born, the family's survival depends on a web of support stretching well beyond her parents. Grandmother Rommely plants the seeds of the family's future by urging Katie to educate her children and save for land, while Aunt Sissy repeatedly steps in to solve crises large and small. Music enters the children's lives through a clever barter arrangement Katie makes with a neighbor, broadening their world despite extreme poverty. After Johnny's death, a saloon owner's loyalty and Katie's fierce resourcefulness keep the household afloat, though her painful choice to favor Neeley's schooling over Francie's reveals the cost of that survival. Sissy's own parallel story—marked by serial loss, accidental bigamy, and an unconventional adoption—runs alongside the Nolans' hardships throughout the novel. The secondary events collectively show that the Nolan family's resilience is built not by any single act of heroism but by a long accumulation of loyalty, sacrifice, and creative problem-solving.

The supporting forces, setbacks, and relationships that sustain the Nolan family through poverty and loss.

Francie overhears men at Union Headquarters gossiping about her father's drinking and briefly questions his worth for the first time.

Johnny tells Francie while she irons his uniform that he is not a happy man and never wanted a family.

Sissy warns Katie she must accept Johnny's alcoholism without nagging or risk losing him to another woman entirely.

Francie learns to read and promises herself she will read one new book every single day for the rest of her life.

Neighborhood women surround and stone the unwed mother Joanna in the street until her baby is struck and starts bleeding.

After witnessing Joanna's public attack, Francie silently places her published anthology in the baby's carriage and resolves never to trust women again.

Sissy secretly takes in an abused teenager's illegitimate baby and convinces her husband the child is his own premature birth.

A suspicious Johnny demands proof he was not deceived; Katie has Francie and Neeley stand before him as living evidence.

Francie and Neeley break down crying on their post-funeral walk; Francie admits she believes in Jesus but no longer in God.

Katie gathers the children after the funeral and declares that from now on she will serve as both their mother and their father.

Francie's teacher demands she burn her sordid family stories; Francie secretly burns the approved writing and keeps the stories instead.

Francie enrolls in summer college courses by falsely claiming on her registration that her high school education was private.

Francie agrees to marry Corporal Lee Rhynor before he ships out to war after spending only two evenings together.

Francie receives a letter from Lee's actual wife revealing his love was false; Katie tells Francie that McShane has written asking to visit.

Francie leaves Brooklyn for college and notices a new tree growing upward from the stump where the old Tree of Heaven was cut down.

Beneath the Nolan family's daily struggle lies a series of quiet revelations and decisive personal moments that shape each character's inner life. Francie's early discovery of her father's limitations—first through gossip at the Union and then from Johnny's own painful confession—forces her to see the world more clearly than any child should. Turning points accumulate as Francie witnesses the brutal stoning of an unwed mother, burns the wrong stories under her teacher's orders, and falls for a soldier who was never truly hers. The story of Sissy's secret adoption and Katie's solemn declaration that she is now both mother and father mark the family's pivotal transition after Johnny's death. Francie ultimately chooses education over comfort, enrolling in college under false pretenses before leaving Brooklyn entirely. The novel closes with Francie spotting a new tree growing upward from an old stump, a final revelation that life—like the Nolans—always finds a way.

The discoveries, vows, and emotional reckonings that quietly define who Francie and the Nolans become.