UNBROKEN BOOK REVIEW

Young Louie Zamperini is the troublemaker of Torrance, California, stealing food, vandalizing property, and dreaming of hopping on a train and leaving town for good. His older brother, Pete, manages to turn his life around, taking Louie's love of running from the law into a passion for track and field. Louie breaks high school records, goes to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, and trains to beat the four-minute-mile.
His running career is put on hold when the Second World War breaks out. Louie enlists in the army air corps and becomes a bombardier. He and his crew, including pilot "Phil" Phillips, have a air battle in their plane. But Phil's pilot skills and Louie's ingenuity enables them to land the plane, even though it's riddled with over five hundred bullet holes.      
The men are then transferred to a less-reliable plane, the plane is shot down over the Pacific. Only three men survive: Louie, Phil, and Mac. Phil wrestles with his guilt about crashing, Mac kind of goes nuts, and Louie wrestles a shark from the ocean with his bare hands and eats its liver. Mac dies at sea.
Louie and Phil survive for forty-six days, but only to be captured by the Japanese and holed away in a terrible POW camp. The men are shuffled from camp to camp, each one almost worse than the last, until the war ends. Louie survives, despite being pursued by a guard, punched over two hundred times, and forced to clean a pigsty with his bare hands.
Back home, Louie reunites with his family and marries his love-at-first-sight: Cynthia. They have a daughter. Louie is haunted by the horrors of war and turns to alcohol to forget. He is directionless, unable to run or find a new career; he dreams of going to Japan and killing the Bird (the guard that chased him). The newlyweds' life reaches a low point when Cynthia catches Louie shaking the baby. She files for divorce.
Cynthia changes her mind when Billy Graham comes to town. She manages to convince Louie to attend one of his tent preaching sessions. Louie remembers a bargain he made with God while on the raft, and the relative peace he felt that day at sea. Finding faith enables him to quit drinking and become a motivational speaker.       
Years later, Louie forgives all the men who wronged him during the war. When it turns out that the Bird is still alive, Louie hopes to meet the man and forgive him in person—the Bird refuses, but Louie sends him a letter. In 1998, Louie carries the Olympic torch past Naoetsu, where he was once imprisoned, and he puts his dark past behind him