Unbroken / Laura Hillenbrand 473 p.

Louis Zamperini.  A name that will stick in my mind.  His life a story movie audiences would think so over the top as to not be believed.  Told with such respect that one cannot put this down until the last page is perused.  Louis is well on his way to being a juvenile delinquent when his brother Pete opens the world of running to him.  He proves a natural, winning a berth on the Olympic team.  WWII comes and Louis is on a bomber plane that crashes into the Pacific where survivors scramble to overcome sharks, lack of food and water, Japanese strafing, and injuries for weeks and weeks and weeks.  In the Japanese POW camps, Louis incredible survives the harshest of conditions--so much the personal object of one Japanese sergeant that he gets Louis transferred with him to continue the brutality.  The war ends just as the camp officers are given the order to kill every prisoner.  Hillenbrand keeps the reader in suspense even though one knows that Louis survives.  Post Traumatic Stress Order brings "the Bird" back nightly into Louis life.  Dealing with murderous intentions and alcoholism almost breaks Louis.  His strength of will to change comes forth after hearing Billy Graham.  Hillenbrand interweaves in the stories of his comrades, the post war hunt for the Bird and other criminals, and Louis' life.