Laura Hillenbrand (born 1967) is an American writer who grew up in the Washington, D.C., area and studied at Kenyon College. Her first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), about the Depression-era racehorse, was a best seller and was made into a film. While researching Seabiscuit she came across the story of Louis Zamperini, and she spent about seven years writing Unbroken, conducting many interviews with Zamperini and working through archives, letters and diaries. She has written publicly about the chronic illness that has long kept her largely at home.
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“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.”
Unbroken is Laura Hillenbrand's biography of Louis Zamperini, an American runner and Army Air Forces bombardier who survived a plane crash, weeks adrift in the Pacific and more than two years as a prisoner of war in Japan. The book begins with Louie as the restless, thieving son of Italian immigrants in Torrance, California, in the 1920s.