Unbroken

 **Spoilers from paragraph 3+**

This past month I’ve been reading a book called Unbroken written by Laura Hillenbrand. The book goes into great detail and depth about a man named Louis Zamperini and his adventures through highschool, the Olympics, and World War II. This book is really exciting and pulls the reader in, as even in the first chapters we see the protagonist complete a major accomplishment of running in the Olympics. It starts off as a young rebellious boy who wouldn’t pay attention in school, but he learns to channel his defiance into running and builds character throughout the book, taking us on his journey alongside him.

Starting off on this book I was really engaged in the content, as it was exciting and well written. All the events that happen straight from the beginning are relatable and absorbing. As the book transitions into Louis’ war experiences, things get less lighthearted and more descriptive and detailed. The style the whole story is written in is very descriptive and paints a clear view. There are images and even statistics on some pages. One page is full of numbers on deaths during military training of WWII. The book gives a different perspective on what soldiers endured and how hard it was to even get to the battlefield.

The book shows a touch of personality and gruesomeness when the author starts talking about the battlefield experiences. Louie and his comrades were assigned a plane they named “Superman”. An accident happens and Louie, along with two other men, are left stranded on a raft in the ocean. The book gets really suspenseful at this point. The men spent a month and a half stranded in the Pacific Ocean trying to survive. Things only get worse from here. They were spotted by the Japanese and taken as war hostages. Louie was tortured and made miserable by the camps. He gets rescued and the book transitions to his time after the war.

I couldn’t believe this was a true story when I first read it. It sounded like the plot of a movie. It scared me so much when reading the final chapters. Louie dealt with PTSD after the war and started having nightmares. He spent a lot of time drinking and the description of his life after his service really stood out to me. There’s good perspective when it talks about him looking on the bright side of things and getting out of it all. One statement from the book stood out to me the most. “When Louie was in his sixties, he was still climbing Cahuenga Peak every week and running a mile in under six minutes. In his seventies, he discovered skateboarding.” This just shows how amazing Louie really is and how he'll never stop. Sometimes, the book seemed fake, but I found the book engaging and interesting, learning about the man who went through everything good and bad.

-Tristen