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Unbroken

by Diane Dobmeier

August 3, 2012

Laura Hillenbrand’s book UNBROKEN is a biography of the life of Louie Zamperini, an Olympic gold medal runner, but more importantly an American Soldier during WWII. The book starts at his birth and takes you through his entire life. At first I didn’t really care for the story as I did not know who this person was and thought he was a really rotten child and troubled person overall. I was wondering why this part of the book was even necessary and couldn’t wait to get through to the WWII portion of the story. Once I got to the part where he is drafted and trained as a bombardier, it still seemed to me to be taking quite a while to get to what the book was supposed to actually be about – a person whose plane crashed into the Pacific, and how they survived being lost at sea; but this book is so much more than that. The story is amazing.

I had never read about what the soldiers went through or even though about it, it was something that fortunately had never touched my life, but this story gave me a totally different perspective and appreciation of what these men went through in protecting our country. I was not expecting what I read. I found myself staying up until ridiculous hours reading because I did not want to put the book down; even though what I was reading was making me very sad. There was one point where I had to stop reading because it actually was so creepy, I wanted to wait and continue reading in the daylight – this was just before the chapter entitled “Monster”, and I was glad I waited. It was shocking to me what people will do to one another and disheartening. Each time I thought the Japanese could not possibly do anything worse to the men, they did. And the thing that made me most sad was that this was all true and had actually happened.

The best part, for me was toward the end when Louie finally pulls it all together and uses all the bad things that had happened in his life, for good. He finds the place he needs to be, and helps others in ways he never could have, had he not lived the life he did. Even his wrong doings in his youth were a driving force in later helping others. I don’t want to give away too many specifics and ruin the read for you. If nothing else, it will give you a better appreciation of what many soldiers had to deal with, and why we should be praying for them each and every day. If you decide to pick this book up – I promise you will be happy you read it, and you will have a hard time putting it down until you get to the end.

I received this book free from Water Brook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.