The Shack, by William P. Young

If you’ve never heard of William P. Young’s first novel, “The Shack”, you’re certainly not alone. The book was passed on by every major publisher. Christian publishing companies, as they are wont to do, felt it was too controversial. Secular publisher felt it might be too Christian.

So Young’s friends made their own publishing company, Windblown Media, and they put the book in print. “The Shack” was available in May, and has sold 30,000 copies since then, all on word of mouth.

It’s a good thing his friends stepped up. “The Shack” is utterly wonderful, a spare and sweeping tale made epic by it’s singular and simple focus. It’s the best pointedly Christian novel I’ve ever read.

Young’s protagonist is Mackenzie Allen Phillips, as a boy raised by a “vicious mean beat-your-wife-and-then-ask-God-for-forgiveness drunk” of a father, which causes Mackenzie to run away before his 14th birthday. Mackenzie’s past is laid out in the prologue, and we understand Mackenzie is now grown, with five children and a loving wife. Mackenzie has more or less dealt with his past, frosting it over with regular church attendance. He is blessed, we know, because of his family.

On a Summer trip to the Wallowas in Eastern Oregon (a place I personally an appropriately consider to be God’s country), Mackenzie’s life is torn apart as a serial killer abducts his youngest daughter, Missy. The ensuing days are a rush of activity before detectives finally find Missy’s blood-soaked red dress in a rundown shack near the Idaho border

Mackenzie refers to what follows as The Great Sadness, as the Phillips family deals with the grief in their own ways. Mackenzie, in particular, deals with the anger toward a God who it seems has only given him pain.

Four years later, Mackenzie receives a letter in the mail with no stamp and no postmark:

Mackenzie,

-Papa

Papa is the name Mackenzie’s wife uses for God, and while he is suspicious and angry and wonders if the letter is a sick joke, Mackenzie ultimately decides to make the trip out I-84 and return to the place of his worst nightmare.

The first five chapters of “The Shack” are good, but not great. There are moments where Young’s writing shines, but the amount of exposition needed to lay out the story is understandably cumbersome, and laying out those details in a fluid manner is a skill learned with time. Young’s inexperience as a writer is most glaring in his dialogue and how minor characters aren’t developed fully. These are minor issues, though, and snobbier readers turned off initially would be well-served to keep reading.

Once chapter six hits, the story bursts to life. Mackenzie does meet God at the cabin (each member of the Holy Trinity, in fact) and the weekend he spends with Papa (God the Father, embodied as a black woman), Sarayu (the Holy Spirit, embodied as an multi-ethnic woman, but slightly ethereal) and Jesus is, simply put, glorious.

As Mackenzie eats, talks and walks with each personification of God, I couldn’t help but feel like this was a different book entirely, a book written as one man’s conversation with God but told from God’s perspective. The dialogue problems are gone, popping up only when Mackenzie speaks. When Papa, Jesus and Sarayu speak, the responses tore through me.

The subject matter is broad, a sort of “Christianity in a nutshell”, encompassing everything from free will to laws. You’d think the breadth would detract from the reason Mackenzie is there with God in the first place, to find out why He would allow his daughter to be so violently killed, but the character of God is not so easily explained. An overview of everything answers Mackenzie’s question much better than a single answer.

I’ve nitpicked in this review, but I need to point out how this book hit me like a freight train. I was brought to tears at least ten times while reading, breaking down in sobs more than once. Mackenzie’s relationship with his Creator is, after all, the same as ours, and I wept mostly in the moments where Papa/Sarayu/Jesus’s love for Mackenzie was so obviously apparent.

There are scenes of heaven, and of the relationship between humans, that are unspeakably beautiful. It often feels like William P. Young is not writing this story, that it was given to him as a gift. The story isn’t dry, either. There are twists and turns that kept me turning pages and up late at night, and to share each of them would ruin the reader’s experience.

“The Shack” has the potential to change the Church dramatically, and not because Young has crafted a water-tight case of apologetics or vividly described the End Times. The impact of this book is based solely on the relationship between you and me…all of us…and the God we follow. In that intimacy, the larger questions and problems just melt away.