Laura Hillenbrand Writes Awesome Books, and 'Unbroken' is No Exception

Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Seabiscuit, suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, which causes, among other horrible symptoms, profound exhaustion and body aches. Because of her ailment, it took Hillenbrand seven years to write her new book Unbroken, which has already skyrocketed to the top of the New York Times Best-seller List, but she told Imus today that working on stories like the one featured in Unbroken is "the most wonderful escape from the life I have.”
 
While researching Seabiscuit, the story of a famous racehorse in the 1930s, Hillenbrand stumbled across the name Louis Zamperini. “Every time I was looking up stories on Seabiscuit in the papers in ’36, and ’37, and ’38, there were articles on this teenage delinquent who became the fastest high school miler in the world,” Hillenbrand said.
 
Intrigued, Hillenbrand had jotted down his name, and later learned that not only had Zamperini, who ran a 4:07 mile, made it all the way to the 1936 Olympics, where he shook hands with Adolf Hitler, but he also joined the Army Air Corps in World War II, became a bombardier in the Pacific, crashed his bomber into the ocean, and spent the next 47 days on a raft with two other guys, one of whom eventually died.
 
“It was just an extraordinary journey,” Hillenbrand said, describing the shark attacks, typhoons, and extreme starvation the men endured as they floated. “And at the end of it, they were captured by the Japanese, and that’s just the beginning of the story.”
 
Once she completed Seabiscuit, Hillenbrand set out to discover if Zamperini was still around. She tracked him down in California, they exchanged letters, and then she gave him a call. “We had one epic phone conversation where he told me his whole story, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to do a book on this guy,’” she said.
 
Zamperini had written an autobiography, but his story was otherwise untold. “I’ve never heard of one individual going through as many things as this guy did, and living to tell at the end of it,” Hillenbrand said. Now 93 years old, Zamperini was “absolutely game” to share his tale, though he didn’t think there was much left to tell. Hillenbrand rightly suspected otherwise.
 
She scoured national archives here and abroad, in places like Australia and Norway, and unearthed “tons” on information on prisoners of war. “I found out lots of things that he didn’t know about what had been going on around him, and why certain things happened to him,” she said.
 
For instance, Zamperini was condemned to execution while being held captive on the Marshall Islands. “They decided at the last minute not to kill him, because he was a world famous Olympian and they could use him for propaganda,” she said.
 
Instead, his Japanese captors tried to force Zamperini to make anti-American statements in radio broadcasts from Tokyo, but he refused. After that, Hillenbrand said, “They were just determined to break him.”
 
As with Seabiscuit, Unbroken seems perfectly suited for the big screen, and Hillenbrand confirmed that there’s talk of a movie. “It’ll be a hell of a thing to see,” she said.
 
Promoting her new book has taken a toll on Hillenbrand’s health, and she admitted she needs to find more time to rest. But Hillenbrand is so passionate about Zamperini’s story, it’s difficult to keep her down.
 
“This man’s life is so extraordinary, and I think everybody should know what these people did, these airmen, these soldiers, for the sake of saving the world, and this man is an example of that,” she said.
 
In Imus’s view, however, Hillenbrand’s courage is equally admirable, and he told her so. In keeping with her character, she shrugged off the compliment. “It’s nothing next to Louis Zamperini,” she said.
 
­-Julie Kanfer