Betty MacDonald and Onions in the Stew

 

 

Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald

Here’s a description of the book by John P. Marquand for Book of the Month Club News, provided when the book was released in 1955:

---

Red-ink budgets, balky plumbing, and noodles

Anyone who can write with genuine joy, gusto, and enthusiasm regarding the vicissitudes of home, husband, dogs, and children commands an enormous audience. This of course has been the deserved good fortune of Betty MacDonald ever since The Egg and I appeared in 1945. She is a girl who seems to enjoy every moment of living, not matter how or where.

She has coped with red-ink budgets, balky plumbing, and nothing in the kitchen but noodles. She has lived through dog fights, measles, and all the usual and unusual cataclysms of nature. But even when domestic morale has sunk to the bottom of the barrel, she and everyone around her have had a wonderful time.

Because of her ability to tell a good story, this joie de vivre is communicated to all who read her pages. Her latest book, in my opinion, her best to date. Onions in the Stew is a homely title, but then it is a homely book, brimming over with incidents of everyday life — some of which we have experienced ourselves, others which Betty MacDonald enables us to live vicariously and with unalloyed delight.

---

---

City folks on the frontier

Onions in the Stew is a saga of domestic life on Vashon Island, which lies in Puget Sound within commuting distance of the city of Seattle, Washington. If one thinks that Vashon Island — complete with Betty MacDonald, her husband Don, her daughters Anne and Josh, and the family dog Tudor — resembles anything in New York Harbor, they are in error.

The American Northwest is still a land of rugged plenty that has not lost all its frontier quality. Its Douglas fir trees are not lumbered out yet; its shores are washed by the marrow-chilling North Pacific; its forests and farm lands are watered by almost constant winter rainfall. Mount Rainier, when you can see it through the rainclouds, broods over a world of plenty; and a perpetual conflict between nature and human encroachment  lends life there a comedy value which only Betty MacDonald so far has been able to interpret.

She knows that you can never tell exactly what nature may do in the vicinity of Seattle. Plant a sapling on your front lawn and almost overnight it becomes a giant.

If you are not careful with vines and shrubbery, they smother your house while your back is turned. Small fruits, particularly berries, grow in such lavish profusion that they threaten with nervous breakdown. Deer and raccoon wander vaguely over lawns and gardens, and on the beaches are peculiar shellfish, including a clam-like creature known as a geoduck that can move through sand with the speed of an express train.

---

Ludicrous details of keeping a home
 

Vashon Island is inhabited by many friendly and interesting neighbors; the MacDonald House can only be reached by beach or by trail; and the whole area seems to abound in dogs, all of who appear to have incurred the intense dislike of Tudor.

Seeing these phenomena through the eyes of Mrs. MacDonald causes one to grow wiser in the ways of the Northwest — but never sadder. No one can tell a better story than she when it involves the ludicrous details that go into keeping a home together.

It is impossible to forget the MacDonald’s pursuit of the washing machine which they thought was resting safely in a rowboat near their sea wall, or Tudor’s classic fight with one of his bitterest enemies, or the family’s capture of a geoduck. The variety of the MacDonald life is as abundant as Betty MacDonald’s good nature.

Aside from being consistently entertained, readers of Onions in the Stew will also gain a strong sense of inner satisfaction … it teaches us that happiness can flourish in very unexpected quarters as long as it is nourished by comradeship and love and humor, and that for some of us, at any rate, a lot is still right in the world.

— review by John P. Marquand for Book of the Month Club News

You can order Wolfgang Hampel 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' (Satire is my favourite animal) 

U.S.A.

United Kingdom 

Australia

Austria

Brazil 

Czech Republic 

Denmark

Finland

France

Germany

Hungary

Italy 

Japan 

Norway

Poland 

Slovak Republic

Spain 

Sweden

Switzerland

The Netherlands


Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal ) 

Informationen über die Kultveranstaltung "Vita Magica" der Akademie für Ältere in Heidelberg  

Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )

Betty MacDonald, a very special politician and a year ago 

 

Roger Cicero - ESC winner 2007  

Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever. 

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings  'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September

you can join 

Betty MacDonald fan club

Betty MacDonald Society  

Vita Magica  

Eurovision Song Contest Fan Club 

on Facebook

Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen

Vita Magica 

Betty MacDonald 

Betty MacDonald fan club 

Betty MacDonald fan club on Facebook

Betty MacDonald forum  

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)   

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel -  cyclopaedia.net ( German ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia  ( English / German )

Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )

Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)

Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel 

Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD

Betty MacDonald fan club items 

Betty MacDonald fan club items  - comments

Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I  
 
Betty MacDonald fan club groups 

Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund