Looking For Betty MacDonald
Betty Bard 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. Readers embraced her memoir of her years as a young bride operating a chicken ranch on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, and The Egg and I sold its first million copies in less than a year. The public was drawn to MacDonald's vivacity, her offbeat humor, and her irreverent take on life. In 1947, the book was made into a movie starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, and spawned a series of films featuring MacDonald's Ma and Pa Kettle characters.
MacDonald followed up the success of The Egg and I with the creation of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a magical woman who cures children of their bad habits, and with three additional memoirs: The Plague and I (chronicling her time in a tuberculosis sanitarium just outside Seattle), Anybody Can Do Anything (recounting her madcap attempts to find work during the Great Depression), and Onions in the Stew (about her life raising two teenage daughters on Vashon Island).
Author Paula Becker was granted full access to Betty MacDonald's archives, including materials never before seen by any researcher. Looking for Betty MacDonald, the first biography of this endearing Northwest storyteller, reveals the story behind the memoirs and the difference between the real Betty MacDonald and her literary persona.
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Paula Becker is a
writer and historian living in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of the
book Looking
For Betty MacDonald: The Egg, The Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and I (University
of Washington Press), and co-author (with Alan J. Stein) of the books The
Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair And Its Legacy (Seattle
Center Foundation, 2011) and Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition:
Washington’s First World’s Fair (History
Ink/HistoryLink in association with University of Washington Press, 2009). More
than 300 of Paula’s essays documenting all aspects of Washington’s history
appear on HistoryLink.org, the
online encyclopedia of Washington state history, where she is a staff
historian.
Click to listen to an excerpt of Looking For Betty MacDonald, read by the author.
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