Growing up in our house, books reigned supreme. My mother used to say the one thing she couldn’t stand to throw out, was a book. Other women might have an old pair of jeans from high school, stuffed in the back of the closet hoping someday to fit back into them. Momma had her favorite book, the cover tattered and held together with scotch tape, sitting on her night table. To this day, she re-reads that book at least once a year. It is Betty Smith’s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.