Have You Read "Unbroken" or Just Watched the Movie?

[A Saturday Feature of the First Road Blog]

Good friends are good to have. Among the best are those who loan you books. I have such a friend, and this year he loaned me Laura Hillenbrand’s, Unbroken – a biography following the career of Olympic runner Louie Zamperini through his dark months as a World War II prisoner-of-war in the Pacific.

The chapters follow the familiar format for such a biography. They begin with an overview of the primary characters and the satellite players in the story. The author introduces these people in a way which makes the reader want to skip to the epilogue to foresee what will happen to them. However, to do so would miss the depth of grief the author intends as the casualties mount.

Once the reader moves through the crises which result in Zamperini’s capture by the Japanese, he or she is taken on the maddening roller coaster of an intensifying hell-on-earth which sharpens awareness of the impact of war on the minds and souls of servicemen – especially, those who endure the psychopathic inhumanity of some who hold absolute control over a totally vulnerable victim.

Then comes the rescue and the subsequent struggle with bitterness and, for Zamperini, the God-given deliverance from the inner death of longed-for revenge. That, in turn, brings the reader to the epilogue which is well worth the wait. There we celebrate Zamperini’s post-war decades of energy -- serving Christ and developing a ministry to troubled youth. There, also, we feel the silent solitude of a non-Olympic comrade who went through the same ordeals but afterward lived, unheralded, in the shadow lands of celebrating the “hero.” And we struggle with ambivalence at the surprise reappearance of a repulsive character the author has dangled in front of us throughout much of the narrative.

There is a movie now. I haven’t seen it. I may not. Why spoil a good book? 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ALL FIRST-ROAD ARTICLES