He turns to see the shack transformed into a beautiful cabin beside a lake. He leaves the cabin, but the forest starts to transform around him, blooming with the new life of spring. Feeling sick and overwhelmed, he enters the dismal shack and breaks down at the sight of the bloodstain on the floor. Mack borrows Willie’s truck and drives to the forest. He can’t stop thinking about the note in the mailbox, so when Nan says that she is thinking of taking the kids to see her family, Mack jumps at the chance to go to the shack alone. Kate has become withdrawn, and Mack feels himself drifting from God. In the present, the family has struggled to recover from Missy’s death. When Mack sees the object, he breaks down: it is Missy’s dress, torn and bloodstained. Sam asks Mack to identify something in a dilapidated shack.

There they find a ladybug pin that matches a signature left by a serial killer known as “Little Ladykiller.” The next day, the truck is spotted near a national forest and Mack joins officers in canvassing the area. Police officers arrive on the scene, and one, Tommy Dalton, goes with Mack to look over the campsite. Mack runs to help his son, but his relief upon saving Josh is quickly overshadowed when he sees that Missy is gone.Ī camper tells Mack that he saw a little girl in the back of a truck crying as the truck left the campsite. Kate tries to wave at Mack from the canoe, but it capsizes, trapping Josh below. Missy colors at a picnic table while Mack watches. Touched, Mack reassures her that she will never have to do anything like that.Īll goes well until the last morning of the trip, when Kate and Josh go to play in a canoe. Later that night, Missy tells Mack that the story reminds her of Jesus, and asks if God will ever ask her to jump off a waterfall to save her family. In the story, a Native American princess sacrifices herself by jumping off of the waterfall in order to save her tribe. On the way, the family stopped at Multnomah waterfall, where Mack related a favorite story of Missy’s. Three years earlier, Mack took his children Kate, Josh, and Missy-then six-on a camping trip. Nan says she is praying to Papa-her nickname for God-for answers. Nan calls to say that she’s worried about Kate, the couple’s oldest daughter, who has been distant. Mack goes to the mailbox to find a note inviting him up to the shack next weekend, signed “ Papa.” It sends Mack a chill of anger and fear.

Mack watches the snow from his home office, though the beauty of nature mcan’t lift his depression, which he thinks of as The Great Sadness.

As an adult, Mack is still haunted by those memories, but he has found happiness with his wife Nan and their five children. Mack had a difficult childhood his father, a violent alcoholic, terrorized Mack and his family. Willie, the story’s narrator, introduces his friend Mackenzie Allen Phillips.

The shack book