Author LAURA HILLENBRAND
Publisher RANDOM HOUSE
ISBN 1-4000-6416-8
Laura Hillenbrand came to some prominence because of her book about the horse Seabiscuit. There she showed herself adept at bringing historical subject matter to life and her diligence in researching her subject.
“Unbroken” is not a book about a horse but about a man who lived an extraordinary life. Louis Zamperini came from Torrance California, born to Italian immigrant parents he was an unruly child who became an Olympic runner before being called up to serve in the American Airforce in the Pacific theater of the second world war. He was a bombardier in a B29 and went down in the Pacific Ocean and drifted with two of his friends on an epic journey in two rafts until being captured by the Japanese.
He was a POW for two and a half years during which time, in common with many others he was terribly ill-treated and abused by his captors until he was liberated. After his liberation he married and descended into a state of hatred and bitterness only alleviated by alcohol. Nothing was working in his life, he was a mess, consumed and ruined by flashbacks and memories of his internment and the sufferings he had incurred, especially at the hands of a Japanese corporal nicknamed ‘the Bird.’ All changed when he attended a Billy Graham Crusade being held in the Los Angeles area. He responded to the Lord and his hatred, anger and drink problems disappeared overnight and from then he pursued a life of speaking of Christ and established a camp to help troubled boys. His life was long, eventful and Hillenbrand’s telling of it involved lots of research and time spent with Zamperini who is still living though in his nineties. It seems that his memory was clear and razor sharp and his telling of his story to his author was candid. Probably, the one main failing of her book is the possible exaggerations it contains. Her descriptions seem to go into excesses as she describes the long raft journey, the sharks and then various aspects of the camps with their terror tactics.
However, having said this, the bare bones of this story are incredible and although the mercy of God and His transforming power in the life of Zamperini only emerge in the last fifty pages or so because the bulk of the book deals with the first part of his life, we can trace the way God kept and protected him in those first three and a half decades where he did not know Him.
Remember, this is not a ‘Christian’ book, but a book about a man who became a Christian, a man who was bright, resilient, ebullient and full of energy, many testified that he was a wonderful person to be around. That Hillenbrand has gone through mountains of research cannot be doubted as she sets Zamperini in the context of the war with Japan and the tragedy of so many returning POW’s afterwards. This is a gripping read.
