Book: Unbroken

Unbroken

by Laura Hillenbrand

Length: 406 pages

Format: Hardback
Price: I borrowed from a friend, so free!
Author Website: http://laurahillenbrandbooks.com/ (photo credit)

Basic Premise: Louie Zamperini is a misfit adolescent who finally finds his purpose in life - achieving an Olympic medal in running.  But after the Olympics are canceled due to WWII, Louie is swept into the chaos of war where he endured unimaginable hardships, including gross mistreatment in the POW camps of Japan.  It is a story of hardship, perserverance, and faith.

My Take: 9 out of 10 (scale here)
I had heard of this book many times before my book club elected to read it.  I started it on my trip to LA back in July, but somehow it got shoved at the bottom of my to-do list once school started.  However, now that I am on bed rest, I have plenty of time to read!  I picked this back up and was swept, almost instantly, back to the Pacific Islands in the early 1940s.

As a rule, I am not a non-fiction reader.  It bores me.  I like to read stories - novels with all the elements of plot.  And this story, though it is a biography, follows the pattern of fiction.  I loved this book.  Loved it.  Well, wait - didn't love all the graphic descriptions of what went on in the POW camps.  Being a novice in this area of history, I had no idea what countries did with POWs, or rather, what they were supposed  to do.  This novel was extremely eye-opening with regards not only to POWs, but the atrocities of war in general.  It's a wonder any of those men remained in the military.  Even though I didn't enjoy those parts of the novel, they were quite essential to the telling of the story, and to understanding what this man experienced.  The only thing I didn't care much for were the ocassional rabbit trails explaining the types of planes flown, or the types of bombs used, or other such details that come with such specialized content.  Ocassionally I got lost in some of the jargon, and honestly, I didn't care about that part.  I just wanted to know what happened to the character.  And I loved how it ended.  What an amazing cap to an amazing story.  I highly recommend this read.