Unbroken:
A World War II Story of
Survival,
Resilience, and Redemption
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into
the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick
of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on
the ocean surface, a face appeared. It
was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a
life raft and pulling himself aboard. So
began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and
incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home
to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had
channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had
carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute
mile. But when war had come, the athlete
had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a
tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping
sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond,
a trial even greater. Driven to the
limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity;
suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would
be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the
same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s
journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human
mind, body, and spirit.
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