Unbroken

Unbroken (2010) by Laura Hillenbrand. Quite simply one of the best books I have ever read. Hillenbrand tells the true story of Louie Zamperini -- world-class runner, World War II bombardier, POW, youth leader after the war. Zamperini, or Louie as she refers to him, had a somewhat misguided youth, but emerged as a near-four minute miler and participated in the Olympics in 1936. When World War II broke out, he ended up in the Army Air Force, serving in the Pacific theater. His plane goes down and he drifts in a lifeboat for some ungodly length of time, then is captured by the Japanese. He spends the rest of the war as a Prisoner of War, and is horribly abused by a camp guard known as the Bird. But he survives and is eventually redeemed. Hillenbrand, the author of Seabiscuit, has a talent for writing so that each sentence seems to count, so that every paragraph contains a telling detail. I was reading two books when I started this one, but the other book went by the wayside as I could hardly put Unbroken down. The later chapters, when Louie and his fellow POWs are finally freed at the end of the war, brought tears of joy to my eyes. Truly an outstanding book. Grade: A