'Some of this stuff was just horribly engaging,' says Jacobsen, who initially agreed to read only 25 pages. Not long after, Young called Wayne Jacobsen, a former pastor and author he'd met at one of Jacobsen's book signings. The copies that didn't go to his kids were mailed to close friends, who passed along copies to their friends. 'After 11 years of renovation I was finally ready to write the story, and it just kind of blew out.' He finished the book in four months and printed 15 copies at an

House of shame, house of pain, house of lies,' says Young. 'My house on the inside is where I stored the addictions. Writing The Shack helped Young wrestle with his tangled feelings, while struggling as an office manager, a Web writer and an online-conferencing consultant. His wife urged him to write a story to explain to his children his struggles with faith and morality. Years later the deaths of his younger brother and young niece pushed him to the point of despair. Born in Grande Prairie, Alta., he spent much of his childhood with his missionary parents in what was then Dutch New Guinea among the Dani tribe, some of whose members sexually abused him. Mack spends the weekend in a therapy session with the Trinity to understand how to overcome his anger and reestablish his faith.

God turns out to be a big black woman with a poking sense of humor Jesus is a Middle Easterner in plaid shirt and jeans and the Holy Spirit is an Asian pixie with gardener's gloves. The spiritual, often whimsical thriller is the story of Mack, who, four years after his daughter is abducted during a family camping trip in an Oregon state park, receives an invitation in his mailbox from God to come to the shack where his 5-year-old was murdered. The Shack, a novel he started in 2005 to explain to his six kids how he coped with tragedy, has become an astonishing hit, selling 7.2 million copies, resting for a year on the New York Times bestseller list and putting $4 million into Young's pocket. Since then Young, 54, has undergone a reversal of fortune as sudden and dramatic as that of Job.

The shack by william paul young