Long before Betty MacDonald became known as the author of The Egg And I, she was a hard-working single mother in Seattle, Washington. After struggling to hold down a series of jobs during the first few years of the Depression, she managed to get hired on as a Federal government clerk, which brought some measure of security to her family. This was short-lived; diagnosed with TB, MacDonald was admitted into a state of the art (at that time) sanatarium. This book records her nine months living in the shadow of TB and the people she met during her struggle against not just the disease, but despair, unkindness, and harsh treatment. That it is an extremely funny book is a measure of MacDonald's talent.