Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand wrote Louis Zamperini's amazing and inspiring story in her best-selling book, Unbroken: a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Her first book, Seabiscuit, was also a best-seller and was made into an award-winning movie, starring Tobey Maguire and Jeff Bridges. Both stories were about overcoming incredible odds, which Hillenbrand is very familiar with in her own life.

Hillenbrand wrote Unbroken  from her Washington, D.C. home, where she is mostly home bound because of a debilitating case of chronic fatigue syndrome. She has suffered from this illness for twenty five years, dealing with severe vertigo and the accompanying nausea, weakness, and debilitating fatigue. She is a true survivor in her own right.

She wrote poignantly about her experience with her illness in an article for the New Yorker.

During the seven years it took Hillenbrand to write the book, she and Zamperini never saw each other face-to-face, but communicated over the phone. It was Zamperini's great desire to meet Hillenbrand--his hero--and her health improved enough at one point for that to be possible.

Zamperini, Hillenbrand, and John Nabor, a former Olympian and friend of Zamperini

In 2008, Hillenbrand married her long-time boyfriend and college sweetheart, Borden Flanagan, who is a professor of government at American University. She talks about how he saved her life in her New Yorker article and their love story is chronicled in Bethesda Magazine.

Perhaps it took someone like Hillenbrand, whose steely persistence is required daily, to do justice to Zamperini's story.