Anybody Can Do Anything

Comedy is probably not the first thing that springs to mind when we recall the Great Depression, but when Betty MacDonald recounted her experiences of that "hard" and "dreary" era in Anybody Can Do Anything, she found lots to laugh about.

Chronologically, this book takes place after her misadventures on a chicken ranch – the subject of Betty's first book, The Egg and I – and before her account of a year spent in a tuberculosis sanatorium, recounted in The Plague and I (both of which are also available in audio from Post Hypnotic Press. Despite the hilarity with which she described her time spent chicken farming, she was unhappy in her marriage and terribly lonely. Anybody Can Do Anything opens with her leaving the farm and her husband and making her way with her two children back to Seattle and the bosom of her family, just as the Depression begins. She and her family - a mother, a brother, and three sisters, plus her two young girls – live in a "modest dwelling in a respectable neighborhood, near good schools and adequate for a normal family." As the Depression goes on, they find much comfort in having that home and in having each other to rely on and commiserate with.