The Shack

The Foreword frames the narrative of Chapters 1-18 as a story written down by Willie, a friend of the main character, Mackenzie Allen Phillips (Mack). Mack has a wife and five children and is in his mid-fifties at the time of Willie’s writing. Two of their children are grown and live elsewhere, but the youngest three—Josh, Kate, and Missy—are still at home. Mack’s wife, Nan, has a faith expressed in a deeply intimate relationship with God. She refers to God as “Papa,” a term of endearment that Mack is not comfortable using in his own spiritual life. This stems, at least in part, from Mack’s trauma at the hands of his own father, who was abusive and had an alcohol addiction. When Mack was 13 years old, his father tortured him for seeking help from someone outside the family: “For almost two days, tied to the big oak at the back of the house, he was beaten with a belt and Bible verses every time his dad woke from a stupor and put down his bottle” (8). In response, Mack fled his home and never returned, spending years working overseas and attending a seminary before moving to Oregon to start his family.