Week 1: Foreword & Chapter 1 — A Confluence of Paths

1.The novel is framed as Willie's retelling of Mack's story. What effect does this first-person narrator create? Does knowing the story comes "secondhand" make it feel more or less trustworthy to you, and why?

2.Chapter 1 introduces Mack as a man carrying something Willie calls "the Great Sadness." Even before you know its cause, what does the phrase itself communicate? What image or feeling does it conjure for you?

3.We get early glimpses of Mack's childhood — a deeply religious but abusive father. How does Young use that backstory to set up the kind of wounds Mack carries into adulthood, and into his relationship with God?

4.Mack is described as a man of faith who nonetheless feels a growing distance from God. Have you ever experienced a season where belief and closeness to God felt like two separate things? What caused that gap?

5.Willie says he is sharing this story because it changed Mack — and because he believes it might change the reader too. What do you hope to get out of reading this book? What questions are you bringing to it?

6.Young opens with a world of ordinary family life: marriage, children, work, stress. Why do you think he grounds the story so firmly in the ordinary before introducing the extraordinary? What does that choice say about where God tends to show up?