BookView Review

MacDonald blends memoir, grief narrative, and spiritual exploration in Hydrangeas from Dad, a deeply personal account of how the death of her father altered the emotional and philosophical direction of her life. The book traces the period surrounding Bill Pukatch’s final stroke, the family’s gathering during hospice care, and the difficult reorientation of life after the loss of the man who had long served as the family’s emotional anchor. What begins as a story of anticipatory grief gradually expands into an examination of memory, spiritual longing, intuition, and the ways people search for meaning after devastating loss.

MacDonald captures the surreal atmosphere surrounding death with clarity: sleepless drives to the hospital, relatives rotating through vigil shifts, strained attempts to remain composed, and the quiet rituals families create when there is nothing left to fix. The strongest emotional current in the book is not the supernatural event itself, but the aching human desire beneath it, the wish that connection does not end abruptly when a loved one dies. The turning point arrives when MacDonald receives an unexplained image message from her deceased father’s phone containing a photograph of blue hydrangeas. Rather than constructing the book as an argument for the paranormal, she focuses on how the experience transformed her emotionally and spiritually. The later chapters turn toward reflections on soul, shamanic practice, creativity, horses, intuition, and personal reinvention after grief.

A reflective, tender memoir about loss, inner transformation, and the search for meaning.

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