I usually don’t cry when nearing the end of a biography. After all, biographies are about famous people, and we already know how the story ends. But in rare cases, a life story is gripping enough and the writing brings the subject alive. In those cases, the biography’s subject becomes a beloved friend, so the reader is moved to tears when it’s time to say good-bye.
At the end of Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, I didn’t want to say good-bye to Louis Zamperini. I’d come to love the man who’d once been an incorrigible youth, well-known to the local police department. I raced beside him when he qualified for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and rubbed my eyes when he shook hands with Hitler. I started with recognition upon hearing of his early bomber training in Sioux City, Iowa. I barely endured the pages recounting his 42 days on a life raft in the Pacific after a B-24 Bomber crash. I cringed at horrific descriptions of his treatment in a World War II vet who suffered indescribable horrors in a series of Japanese POW camps. After the war, when he became an alcoholic to blot out the POW memories, my heart ached for him. When his life changed after hearing the gospel at a Billy Graham Crusade, I rejoiced.
And when author Laura Hillenbrand (she also wrote Seabiscuit) described the optimistic ninety-two-year-old Louis Zamperini when the book was released in 2010, I began to cry. I didn’t want to leave this man, this unbroken man who forgave the Japanese prison guards who tortured him and took away his dignity.
I cried to think of all he’d suffered, all he’d taught me, and all the lives his story will change. I cried because Louis chose the better part and by his choice, has changed many lives for good. I cried to think of how this story would have been lost had not Hillenbrand begun her research while Louis, his siblings, and several of his war buddies were still alive.
If you read Unbroken, you may cry, too, when it’s time to say good-bye to a man whose true story reads like an implausible Hollywood movie script. But a good friend is worth a few tears, don’t you agree?
Go ahead.
Read the book.
Cry a little.
Be inspired.
Meet Louis Zamperini.
By the time you finish the book, I hope agree he’s worth a few of your tears.
