The Shack is a novel by Canadian author William P. Young and his first published work. Young is the son of Christian missionaries who worked in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, and he grew up alternately amid the Dani ethnic group and in missionary boarding schools before the family moved back to Canada. Having settled in the United States as an adult, Young began writing stories for his children and friends. The earliest version of The Shack was one of these stories, but some of its readers encouraged him to publish the manuscript. Assisted by Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings in the process of editing and rewriting, Young attempted many times to find a commercial publisher before the group decided to form their own company, Windblown Media, and publish the book themselves. Windblown Media released The Shack in 2007, and by the summer of 2008 it had become a surprise bestseller, driven largely by word-of-mouth promotion. The Shack achieved a long run at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and received the 2009 Diamond Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association for surpassing 10 million copies sold. It is often cited as a rare example of a successful independently published work, but along with its enormous popularity it has also drawn criticism in some Christian circles for its theological positions regarding the Trinity and the Bible. It was adapted for film in 2017.

This study guide uses the standard paperback edition printed in 2008.

Content Warning: This guide contains references to violence against children and alcohol addiction.

Plot Summary

The Shack tells the story of Mackenzie Allen Phillips (Mack), a father of five who lives with his wife and children in Oregon. His oldest two children are grown and live elsewhere, but the younger three are still with him and his wife, Nannette (Nan).

Mack takes his three younger children on a camping trip. On the final day of their trip, two of the children, Josh and Kate, go canoeing while his youngest, Missy, stays at the picnic table in their campsite and Mack packs up. The canoe tips over and Mack has to run to the lake to save Josh from drowning. While he is at the lake, Missy is abducted from the campsite. Investigators discover that a serial killer who targets young girls—nicknamed the Little Ladykiller—has kidnapped her, and they trace his trail to an abandoned shack deep in the wilderness. There they find Missy’s bloodstained clothing, but her body is never recovered. The loss of Missy brings a period of emotional desolation to the family, which they call the “Great Sadness.”

A few years later, Mack receives a mysterious note in his mailbox The note purports to be from “Papa,” Nan’s name for God, and invites Mack up to the shack the following weekend. Unsure if it is a prank, a trap, or an actual message from God, Mack goes to the shack without informing the rest of his family. Shortly after arriving there, he finds the location transformed into a beautiful setting with a log cabin and garden, and inside he meets three characters: Elousia, an African American woman who tells Mack he can call her “Papa”; a Middle Eastern carpenter who introduces himself as Jesus; and an Asian woman named Sarayu. These three, he quickly discerns, are representations of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—according to traditional Christian theology, the three compnents of the Trinity.

The majority of the book comprises a series of dialogues between Mack and these three persons, sometimes separately and sometimes together. As they work in and around the cabin, they answer Mack’s questions and lead him to a new understanding of their relationships with each other, with Mack, and with the world at large. They challenge many of Mack’s preconceptions about God, focusing on themes of love and relationships rather than sin, punishment, and righteousness. Little by little, this new perspective helps Mack find healing in his relationship with God, as he begins to see why God would allow evil and suffering in the world, including the evil that claimed Missy’s life: If God did not give humans the ability to choose—including the ability to choose sin—they could not exist in a meaningful, loving relationship with God. What’s more, Mack gains assurance that God can and does transmute the evils of the world into good.

Interspersed among Mack’s dialogues with Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu are a variety of experiences they invite him to participate in. He works alongside Sarayu as they clear a spot in a nearby garden, and he walks across the water of a lake with Jesus. On the other side of the lake he enters a dark tunnel where he interacts with Sophia, a woman who personifies the wisdom of God. She leads him to reflect on the meaning of judgment before showing him a vision of Missy on the other side of a waterfall, alive and happy in Jesus’s presence. Later, Sarayu also shares a vision with Mack, allowing him to see all of creation, including humans, as God sees them, suffused with a brilliance of light and color. In this vision, Mack reconciles with his father, who caused Mack great pain in his childhood. In a final experience, Papa—now appearing as an older Indigenous American man—leads Mack up a mountainside trail to the place the kidnapper hid Missy’s body. They bring her remains back down to the cabin and lay them in a beautiful coffin Jesus has been building; they then bury her in the space that Mack and Sarayu cleared in the garden.

Although Papa offers Mack the chance to stay with them if he wants, he chooses to go back to his family. Mack finds himself back in the dilapidated shack, and as he travels back home he nearly dies in a car accident. He wakes up in a hospital a few days later, surrounded by his family. He shares his experience at the shack with Nan, who gradually comes to believe his story, and the perspective he has gained helps to set the whole family on a journey of healing from “he Great Sadness.