Dancing with Jack
Learning to Live with Cancer
‘Jack the Dancer’ - The laconic Australian slang gives a sly wink to the intense, and intensely personal, experience of living with cancer. Here is an intimate glimpse into that experience as one young woman and mother, diagnosed with breast cancer, finds her footing and manages to walk forward through constantly shifting sands...
Dancing with Jack
...‘Jack’ draws her into an extraordinary life-long dance; facing her mortality, parenting through adversity, aging on fast forward, managing the isolation that partners disease. Adjusting to repeated upheavals while seeking out, and cherishing, sparkling moments.
The author invites us to follow her from medical wards to Loch Ness, from despair to joy, exhaustion to delight, and all places in between. Here is a life revealed; raw, honest, reflective and ultimately hopeful about how the dance of life - even one with Jack - can give profound rewards through all its challenges.
Dancing with Jack is awash with love and spirit. It gives valuable insight into the often-hidden impacts of breast cancer. But more than that, it might also help each of us search for and find the beauty and magic that dwell in the challenges of our own lives.
More Information
Click below to find out more about the book and author, including sales, publishing and distribution courtesy of Vivid Publishing.
Book Launch
You are invited to attend the official book launch on 29th January 2026 at the Adam Armstrong Pavillion in Dalkeith. Doors open 4.30pm, with the event running from 5.00-6.30pm.
Order Online
100% of proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Breast Cancer Research Centre of WA, in perpetuity. Copies can be shipped or collected locally.
Author J.F. MacDonald
"J.F. MacDonald led a distinguished career as a Therapist, Academic, and Mentor, contributing greatly to her field. A passionate reader and lover of the arts, she also cherished writing and was a long-standing member of her writing group. Generous with her time, she built enduring friendships and was a guiding light to those closest to her. She embraced travel and adventure, treasuring journeys with her daughters, especially through Europe. Above all, her most cherished roles were daughter, sister, aunty, mother, and grandmother. Her daughters and grandsons remain her lasting legacy of love and wisdom."
I have had the immense privilege of knowing J.F. MacDonald since befriending her daughter in high school. Living with cancer for all the years I knew her, she never wavered in her kindness, wisdom, and ability to make one feel welcomed, heard, and valued. Throughout her years dancing with Jack, she recorded thoughts, memories and experiences, reflecting the relentless and deeply personal experience of living a rich and beautiful life in the face of illness, treatment, and the innumerable complexities of living with cancer.
It was a great honour when Joanne approached me to design and produce the cover for Dancing with Jack. The time we spent working on the cover together was inspiring and affirming, with her words, insights and stories leaving an impression on me that will last forever. Together we worked to produce a cover that felt authentic to the memories shared in the book, painting Jack as a shadowy yet neutral party, rather than some dark spectre or a villain to "battle". A mysterious, sly figure, ever-present, touching lives both directly, and indirectly. Bringing about moments of pain and sickness, but also sparks of love, laughter, awkwardness, urgency.
Dancing with Jack is at times as comforting as it is confronting, with beautifully crafted prose that delicately tells the story of how a life continues through treatment. Told through snippets and memories, the stories form incredibly-written windows into two decades of a life lived with cancer; the book is difficult to put down, and impossible to forget. Honest, poetic, and truly unique, it has been an incredible project to contribute to in any small way.
