Young, William. The Shack. Newbury Park, CA: Windblown Media, 2007. 252 pages.




The Shack is as mystical and miraculous as a God himself. This incredible story of a middle aged man named Mackenzie Allen Phillips (a.k.a. Mack) who lost his 6 year old daughter to a serial killer is only half of the scene. Years after her death, surrounded by a plauge of depression, he gets a letter from Papa (his wife's way of saying God) to come to the shack. Inside that worn down pile of forgotten rubbish, Young touches light on the dusty catacombs we hide from each other, and ourselves.

The Shack is a beautiful realization and importance of life, religion, and faith. To me, religion has been a sudden noise down an empty hall. I hear it calling me, but I ignore it due to my fear of the unknown. This book forces you to travel in the dark and find that sound, and figure out how it's rhythm will both comfort and shame you. Nothing is left in the corner with Young's powerful descriptions. He shows with the vigor of an actor on the stage the human mind and mortal sins we all have been infected by. From Adam and Eve, and then to Mack. The serious and concrete rules religion gives us are dissected into hardier pieces. The main is, we should live our life to the fullest and always know we're loved.

It is somewhat ludicrous to think that a dead man who's been dead for centuries is watching every human all the time, but the saying “Each life is valued.” is defended with sword and shield. I found constant amusement when Papa would state, “I am very fond of him/her. I love him/her more than anything!” How Young portrayed God made me notice that God isn't an entity that solely exists between the pages of Bibles or the dying wind in Jerusalem, God is love. He is nothing but love and he loves all of us. The Shack easily plucked the staples I used to close my heart, and showed me a greater good I never thought possible. Yes, without a doubt The Shack is that altering. The unique mix of the reality we're choking ourselves with, meeting pure truth has the wheels of limited human minds speeding headfirst towards a tunnel of...everything. The answers to questions no amount of math or science can solve.

I have The Shack next to my bedside. Whenever I need to fight a sin ready to stab me from behind, this book's right in my reach. I highly recommend The Shack to everyone. If you're like me who's in a religious rebellion, The Shack will douse your raging fire. If you're suffering or hitting a bump on the road called life, The Shack is for you. If you're not a religious person, The Shack still teaches the elements many waste more than a hundred years to realize, and they only find the X on the map. The Shack explains this phenomenon in 252 pages of despair, failure, and eventually, holy victory.