Betty MacDonald developed a huge following in the 1940s and 50s with her comic tales of everyday life in the Pacific Northwest.

The Egg and I, her first million-dollar seller, was a bleakly humorous account of chicken farming near Chimacum on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. She moved there in the late 1920s with her first husband, Robert Heskett. The marriage lasted four years.

In 1942 Betty married Don MacDonald, started writing and quickly became a celebrity. A film version of The Egg and I starred Fred McMurray and Claudette Colbert and spawned a series of Ma and Pa Kettle movies.

Onions in the Stew describes her years on Vashon Island, Washington; while The Plague and I is an upbeat account of her battle with tuberculosis at age 30. Her children's novels include Nancy and Plum and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series.

(Written by Mary Jo Barrentine in The Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber, October 29, 1997)