The Shack
William P. Young
2007, Windblown Media, $14.00 USA, Soft Cover, 248 pages
This is an absorbing piece of writing about faith, personal accountability, and humanity's relationship with God. It was a bit melodramatic for me, but when I ignored some of the temptingly obvious tearjerking moments, when I allowed myself to imagine all of this was real and possible, it truly permeated my heart, my soul and gave me a new perspective on my personal relationship with God, heaven and the afterlife. Releasing cynicism was a small price to pay for a deeply beautiful, cathartic suggestion of how we work in tandem with the universe. The various personifications of God reminded me of the Piers Anthony series of books, Incarnations of Immortals, where Death takes on a human form and tells his story. Because I have already read books where Ideas and Beliefs talk as people, think like people and respond to the reader as people, it took me a bit to accept this story as "interesting". For some, the interesting begins when the writer describes God as a black female. For me, it began when the writer laid out a plausible line of logic about why death and horrible things happen to us, despite our faith in a loving Creator. This book is a welcome reprieve from the deluge of mysteries, romances, horror stories out there for reading. On the heat scale, Mighty Toasty.
