The Eagle's Nest

The Shack

by Wm. Paul Young

Published by Windblown Media
256 pages

If you’re look­ing for a book to tug at your heart­strings and open your eyes, then I sug­gest The Shack by Wm. Paul Young. It is a Chris­t­ian fic­tion book that has a dif­fer­ent feel than most in its category.

The main char­ac­ter, Macken­zie, faces tragedy and heartache when his youngest daugh­ter, Missy, is cap­tured and as­sumed dead. Macken­zie is a middle-​​aged, de­voted hus­band and fa­ther who lost his light, when he lost his Missy. He and his wife, Nan, have four liv­ing chil­dren, but still have a void where Missy should be.

Four years ago, young Missy was taken from a camp­ground by “the La­dy­bug Killer.” Mack and his fam­ily as­sit the po­lice in the search for the child, but her body was never found. One crush­ing day the po­lice find a bloody dress be­long­ing to Missy, in a shack quite a ways away from the camp­site. The amount of blood sug­gests that she has been murdered.

Mack goes into a de­pres­sion where he blames him­self for Missy’s death and noth­ing can pull him back. He loses sight of the pos­i­tive side of life, as well as loses God. At least, this is what he thinks. In a let­ter ap­pear­ing to be from God, Macken­zie is told to go back to the shack where Missy’s blood­stained dress was found. Once he ar­rives there, time freezes and the shack trans­forms into a beau­ti­ful cabin. In a mix­ture of emo­tions he is forced to deal with his pain all over again, when God shows up in hu­man form to show him the way out a seem­ingly eter­nal depression.

The Shack is an ex­cel­lent book and I sug­gest any­one in­ter­ested to read it. It starts off slowly, but will not be a waste of your time in the end.