anybody can do anything by betty macdonald

I knew about the house because I’d recently stumbled on Betty MacDonald again after a whirlwind acquaintance with her books in childhood. It evoked that place of shelter and acceptance we spend our lives trying to find our way back to, a home both actual and iconic.

For her millions of readers, it was anywhere, or rather it was our own place, a memory we had-or wished we’d had. The house that Betty wrote about was in Seattle, but it could have been anywhere. To me that night, and always, that shabby house with its broad welcoming porch, dark wood- work, cluttered dining-room plate rail, large fragrant kitchen, easy book-filled firelit living room, four elastic bedrooms-one of them always ice-cold-roomy old-fashioned bathrooms and huge cluttered basement, represents the ultimate in charm, warmth, and luxury.” “According to real estate standards, Mother’s eight-room brown-shingled house in the University district was just a modest dwelling in a respectable neighborhood, near good schools and adequate for an ordinary family. Piggle-Wiggle, and who described the house with such affection? Was it the house I fell for first? Or was it Betty Bard MacDonald, who wrote The Egg and I and Mrs.

Piggle-Wiggle” and becomes lost in Betty’s world-a place where humor overcomes tragedy, and a story deeply rooted in the Pacific Northwest.

A historian seeks to uncover more about the author of “The Egg and I” and “Mrs.

Anybody can do anything by betty macdonald