One would suppose that during the terrible American economic Depression of the late Twenties and early Thirties there was not a lot to laugh about in the great U.S. of A.
All-pervasive helplessness and hopelessness, coupled with horrendous levels of poverty and unemployment would wipe the smile off anyone's face -- one would think. But one would be wrong.
Suicidal failed financiers might wait their turn to jump from the windows of Wall Street, but readers worldwide will already know that Betty MacDonald could always look adversity right in the face and spit in its eye. She did so when she and her young husband took a shortcut to bankruptcy called chicken-farming -- hilariously described in The Egg and I -- and she did so again when she went back to live with her mother with a failed chicken farm and a dead marriage behind her, desperate to find a living to earn in a country without any jobs.
But at least she had her indomitable sister Mary batting for her, running down every hint of a job opportunity, fixing appointments without consultation and catapulting Betty into one hilarious situation after another.
For Mary had always believed that "Anybody Can Do Anything -- especially Betty," and this joyfully funny book proves she was right!