Book Reviews

Back Cover:

Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.

Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant “The Shack” wrestles with the timeless question, “Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?” The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You’ll want everyone you know to read this book!

Review:

This book is about so much more than the gruesome details of how this little girl dies. The author deals with this subject tactfully and respectfully. All of a sudden I was reading along and the thought occurred to me that this book might be like a book I read (that really touched me) called “Dinner with a Perfect Stranger” by David Gregory; but it was nothing like that book. That book was fun and light hearted. William Young takes you into the depths of Mackenzie’s pain and has God show up.

God wants to heal Mackenzie from the inside out. Mack can’t believe this is happening. Did he die and go to heaven? This can’t be God he doesn’t care about him or love him because he let his innocent daughter Missy be murdered. I don’t want any part of this God he thinks. I don’t know why he came?

I don’t want to say too much detail about this book. I don’t want to tarnish your experience. I don’t want you to be swayed one way or the other on how God wants to use the message of this book to reveal Himself to you in a very unexpected and exhilarating way. But I do want to share this with you; a little glimpse inside this powerful book. The experience of this book is like listening to a song that touches your heart to the core and when it’s all over there is no clapping just silence as everyone reflects on what just happened in their heart, soul and mind.

The glimpse : This is what Mack says to God “ I hate all this – this crying and blubbering like an idiot, all these tears,” he moaned.

“Oh child,” spoke Papa tenderly. “Don’t ever discount the wonder of your tears. They can be healing waters and a stream of joy. Sometimes they are the best words the heart can speak.”

The Lord has His fingerprints inside this book for you to find and be transformed. This is not only a GREAT book; a must read; but an experience that will alter the way you look at life and God forever.

Reviewed by: Nora St. Laurent
Book Club Servant Leader
www.psalm516.blogspot.com