"The best thing about the Depression was the way it reunited our family and gave my sister Mary a real opportunity to prove that anybody can do anything, especially Betty."

After surviving both the failed chicken farm - and marriage - immortalized in The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald returns to live with her mother and desperately searches to find a job to support her two young daughters. With the help of her older sister Mary, Anybody Can Do Anything recounts her failed, and often hilarious, attempts to find work during the Great Depression.

About the Author

Betty MacDonald (1907-1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children's books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. The Plague and I takes up Betty's delightful misadventures where The Egg and I left off. She continued chronicling her life story with memoirs Anybody Can Do Anything and finally Onions in the Stew. She lived on Vashon Island in Washington's Puget Sound.

Reviews

"Improbably funny."

-- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Monthly *

"Betty MacDonald endured for me. This was because she was funny. No, that's not quite right. Betty MacDonald was comic. As I became a writer myself, I studied her, trying to figure out just how she did it. . . . What MacDonald achieves in Anybody Can Do Anything is . . . a finely observed journalistic record of her time. . . . The message that MacDonald had sent me is one of sufficiency. The homely, she says is more than enough. There's a clue, of course, right there in the title. It's been telling me since I was a girl, right up through the time I became a writer myself. Anybody can do anything. Even this. Even you."

-- Claire Dederer, author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses

"Included in bestselling book 1,000 Books to Read before You Die: A Life-Changing List by Jim Mustich."

Book Information
ISBN 9780295999791
Author Betty MacDonald
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint University of Washington Press
Publisher University of Washington Press
Weight(grams) 295g