Unbroken is the biography of Louie Zamperini, a world-class athlete turned WWII hero turned...well many other things.
Laura Hildenbrand authored this work, following her award-winning Seabiscuit. It's subtitle touts the his life as a tale of resilience and redmeption - words that often get thrown around flippantly in our day and age. Zamperini's life defines those terms however.
When his bomber crashed in the Pacific, he survived not only the crash but 47 days floating in the ocean. He was found and captured by the Japanese Navy who shipped him off to a POW camp. His experiences as a POW are harrowing and the movie spends most of it's time on these years.
The story is so astounding that it almost seems too incredible. But Hildenbrand's research and sourcing back up these astonishing events.
What the movie couldn't do justice to was the post-war life Zamperini led. The book transparently describes how Louie struggled to adapt to normal civilian life when he came home. Eventually his wife convinced him to attend a Billy Graham crusade, where he gave his life to Christ. Zamperini devoted himself from that time forward to serving others, living until the ripe old age of 97.
After the book had come out in the early 2010's, I first heard of him and this book when my employer, Grace College brought him in to speak. I waited to read Unbroken for a couple years and ended up reading most of it on a plane ride to the Philippines. It made the 16+ hour flight go quicker given Hildenbrand's engrossing style and Louie's incredible story. This is a book that teaches us so much about perseverance, redemption, and even forgiveness.
Don't be intimidated by the book's size, it is story well-worth the time to invest in.
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