"In Onions in the Stew, MacDonald is in unbuttonedly frolicsome form as she describes how, with husband and daughters, she set to work making a life on a rough-and-tumble island in Puget Sound, a ferry-ride from Seattle. "Onions in the Stew" describes Betty MacDonald's years on beautiful Vashon Island in Puget Sound in happy times with her second husband and two daughters. During this time, fame as a writer finally knocked on her door.The book covers the period from 1942 to 1954. It opens just after Pearl Harbor with divorced mother Betty and her two daughters, 12-year-old Anne and 11-year-old Joan, living in her mother's home and Betty working in a building contractor's office. She meets and marries Donald MacDonald and they start searching for a home; unable to find a suitable one in Seattle or the mainland suburbs as a result of wartime influx of population, they try the local islands and finally find a property on Vashon Island. The early part describes the problems of commuting from a home without aroad. Her daughters are at a painful state (they're boy crazy!), putting on lipstick to gather driftwood, switching from hair curlers to hair straighteners and coming up with mysterious ailments to avoid homework. Betty is sunk, miserable at having brought this apparent disaster on them all. Yet, in the midst of the humorous difficulties, the family finds a special value in the life they are creating--a value they wouldn't trade for anything in the world!"--Provided by publisher.
For twelve years we MacDonalds have been living on an island in Puget Sound. There is no getting away from it, life on an island is different from life in the St. Francis Hotel but you can get used to it, can even grow to like it. 'C'est la guerre,' we used to say looking wistfully toward the lights of the big comfortable warm city just across the way. Now, as November (or July) settles around the house like a wet sponge, we say placidly to each other, I love it here. I wouldnt live anywhere else. Betty MacDonalds final memoir, Onions in the Stew recounts her second attempt at farm-living, this time on Washingtons then-remote Vashon Island along with her second husband, Don MacDonald, and her two teenage daughters.
