Description:
"Getting tuberculosis in the middle of your life is like starting downtown to do a lot of urgent errands and being hit by a bus. When you regain consciousness you remember nothing about the urgent errands. You can't even remember where you were going."
Thus begins Betty MacDonald's memoir of her year in a sanatorium just outside Seattle battling the "White Plague." MacDonald uses her offbeat humor to make the most of her time in the TB sanatorium--making all of us laugh in the process.
Brief description: Northwest writer Betty MacDonald (1907-1958) is best known for her entertaining and successful 1945 memoir The Egg and I, about moving to the Olympic Peninsula with her new husband and attempting to raise chickens, as well as her subsequent Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for children.
Review Quotes:
"Improbably funny. . . equally remarkable."
--Steve Donoghue "Open Letters Monthly"