"Awesome?" we say. "Does it really cause us to be in awe of it?" "Wonderful?" my dad asked in a recent sermon. "Do we really wonder at it?"
Our world flings around words willy-nilly at a dizzying pace. The pizza is excellent, the video spectacular. But really? Are we using the words to mean what they do?
I tell you all this to set up the review ahead. I want you to know that I am going to be careful with the words I use to describe Unbroken.
And I want you to know that I mean what I say when I say Unbroken is an incredible book.
I know I'm late to the Louis Zamperini game. Laura Hillenbrand's epic "World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption" came out in 2010 and was named TIME magazine's non-fiction book of that year. Angelina Jolie's award-winning movie adaption came out in 2014. It is now 2016 and I have just closed Unbroken's covers. And I'm in awe of it.
In case you haven't heard of Louis Zamperini, Louie - as he was called - was born in 1917 New York to a pair of kind Italian Catholics. He had one older brother, Pete, and two younger sisters, Sylvia and Virginia. The family moved to Torrance, California, in 1919.
Louie got in trouble a lot as a kid before Pete encouraged him to start running. Pete, a record-breaking runner himself, began training Louie, and the Torrance Tornado, as Louie affectionately became known, broke his brother's records and started running straight for the Olympics.
He smashed national high school records first and then launched himself to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, the youngest American qualifier ever for the 5,000 meter race. While he didn't receive a medal, he did his country proud and set his sights on the 1940 Olympics, believing he could win a medal then.
(If you haven't read Unbroken and intend to, there are some spoilers ahead, so don't say I didn't give you fair warning.)
Louie never made it to another Olympics. When World War II broke out, he was thrust into a battle that would change his life forever.
He enlisted in the Air Corps, but after his plane crashed in 1943, killing eight of the 11 total crew members, he and his friend and fellow officer Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips and tail gunner Francis "Mac" Mcnamara were set adrift on a raft with no food, water, or supplies for 47 days.
While Mac eventually died, Phil and Louie lasted out the days only to be captured as POWs by the Japanese. They had survived by catching rain water and small fish every few days while simultaneously being surrounded by sharks the entire time. (On more than one occasion, they had to physically beat the sharks away - including one encounter with a Great White.)
At the hands of the Japanese, Louie would endure brutal torture, beatings, starvation, sickness, mental abuse, and constant cruelty (particularly from a twisted Japanese torturer called "The Bird") until he was finally released at the end of the war in 1945.
After the war, Louie fell in love with a woman named Cynthia and, against her family's wishes, they married quickly. Louie thought he was happy at first but soon began to have visions of strangling his tormenters and, to numb the constant nightmares that haunted him from the war, he fell into alcoholism.
It wasn't until hearing Billy Graham speak in 1949 at the urging of his wife that the "redemption" part of Unbroken comes into focus. Louie and his wife were saved and their lives changed dramatically. Louie started a camp for boys and began to tell people how God had saved the Torrance Tornado.
While he never ran professionally again, Louie continued to run for the rest of his life, well into his eighties and still exercising in his nineties. He passed away just a year and a half ago in 2014 at 97.
Unbroken is spectacularly written. Hillenbrand is a master of words and kept me hooked. I read a few chapters one evening and then the next day was suddenly spellbound and gobbled up the rest of the book in an afternoon.
A lot of reviewers will tell you not to give this book to your children. They are very right. Unbroken is a disturbing story. Louie's time as a POW was sickening. But I think you should consider giving it to your teenagers - and everyone older than that. The themes of courage and fear and friendship and hope and desperation and loneliness and dignity and humanity and compassion and camaraderie weave together a story (a true one) that will change their lives. I don't say this lightly.
When trying to articulate how I felt about this book to my family, it was difficult. "It's a traumatizing story," I fumbled out. "And I never want to see the movie." The torture seemed too brutal to view on screen. But it was more than trauma. The book also left me emotionally shaken. That being said, Hillenbrand never succumbed to mushy sentimentalism. It was just the compelling facts of this shocking story.
But the story did shock me. And I think that's the point. Reminders of human depravity haunt our war memorials. I'm 18. I have never seen war up close and personal and have no frame of reference for World War II besides impersonal history books. This brought it close to home, gave me names and faces and told me how people were hurt and described horrors I could never dream of.
Yet through it all, it gave me hope of redemption. There is human depravity, yes, but there is a light that overcomes the darkness. And that's why I think Unbroken is worth reading.
Photo courtesy of Film Festival Flix.