Unbroken

If you are actually planning on reading Unbroken and want to be surprised, then ignore this post. I didn't know this story before I read it, and I was rivoted. It's also set to be a movie this winter.

Louis Zamperini was just another troubled kid until his brother decided to train him as a runner. He won a scholarship and everyone thought he was going to be the one to break the 4-minute mile, after he ran a 4:08 with almost no training. 2 years into his running career, he set his sights on the 1936 Olympics. Since he knew he wasn't good enough yet to make it in the 1500, he switched gears and qualified in the 5000. He made the team, the finals, and finished 7. He'd only run the race one time before the Olympics.

Eyeing the 1940 Olympics, he got serious about training. But that Olympics was canceled. He was eventually drafted (after Pearl Harbor) and joined the Air Force. in 1943, his plane crashed and he and the pilot survived on a raft for 47 days.

Dehydrated, starving, depraved and exhausted, they were found - by a Japanese ship! They were interrogated and sent to a POW camp. Louis was tortured in the worst ways possible for the next two and a half years. One guard in particular, nicknamed the Bird, was purely evil to Louis.

The war ended, and Louis was brought home a hero. However, his demons haunted him. The Bird appeared every night in his dreams, abusing him as usual. Louis developed a plan to return to Japan and murder him. He also met a girl and they got married, but he slowly lost himself to alcoholism, and along with the PTSD, he and his wife nearly divorced.

Then, Billy Graham came to town. His wife went, and said she was no longer divorcing him. She had been changed by the message of reconciliation in Christ. She begged him to come, and eventually, he did. He too accepted the good news of salvation that Graham preached.

When Louis did finalize his trip to Japan, he found the desire to kill the Bird has dissolved. Instead, he wrote him and told him about Jesus. He also said that he forgave him because of how much God had forgiven him.

I was blown away by this. I read page after page of the torture and abuse Louie suffered under his hands, and then the he extended. What a powerful story.

Alright well if you read this all the way through, I'd still encourage you to read book in its entirety. It's incredible, and I didn't do it justice here.