Although this terrific book about a WWII vet doesn’t come out until mid-November, I wanted to be sure you had a heads up. Hillenbrand writes about characters; first there was Seabiscuit and now in Unbroken it is Louis Zamperini. At the time he grew up in (in the 1920’s), Louie was considered a rebel and delinquent. That is until he found he had a gift for running — he went to the 1936 Berlin Olympics where he actually met Hitler. Then during WWII, Louie became a bombardier flying missions in the Pacific. The pilot Louie flew with was gifted and a little bit lucky, two necessary attributes to survive the frighteningly unsafe planes and conditions our airmen were asked to fly in. In May 1943, Louie and crew went out to search for a lost plane when their own plane went down. Phil, Louie and one other man survived the crash into the Pacific ocean where they then drifted in tiny life rafts (with no food or gear) for weeks. But their hardships had only just begun because they were eventually picked up by a Japanese military boat and captured as POWs.

The subtitle of Unbroken is "A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption" and, though it may sound corny, those words perfectly capture the remarkable story of Louis Zamperini. Hillenbrand has once again done a great (and often terrifying) job of illuminating a remarkable generation of men and women by telling the story of one man’s life. One of my favorite books this year! ~Patti