Book Review: Unbroken

Powell's Books · Barnes & Noble

Laura Hillenbrand © 2014

I always do a drive by of the books at Costco, it’s my treat for, well, going to Costco. I have pretty decent self-control but when I saw a hard bound edition of this book for eleven dollars and change, I was as weak-willed as a toddler within reach of a wedding cake. I wiped the frosting from my chin and checked out. I didn’t realize until I got home that I picked up the Young Adult version. Oh well.

What a fantastic story. Laura does an amazing job of telling the story of Louis Zamperini as a boy and a young man, then as a WWII soldier and as a survivor.

As a young boy in the 1920s, Louis was a troublemaker to the extreme. He got into every imaginable form of mischief, his favorite was stealing food. A smoker and a drunk before he was even a teen, he was very easy to write off as a juvenile delinquent; probably would have been in today’s world. In reality he was a boy with an indomitable spirit, complete with boundless energy and vitality—too much for the confines of what was deemed proper. To keep him out of trouble, Pete, his older brother, guided him into competitive running. Here was an outlet for that boundless energy, here was the attention he craved, here was that thrill he was forever seeking, here was something he could throw his spirit against. It was no surprise that he qualified for the Olympics at nineteen.

WWII broke out. Instead of being drafted and dying on a beach in a standard meat shield operation, he decided to enlist and give himself options. He joined the Army Air Corps.

Some numbers for you: “54,000 men killed in air combat, 36,000 killed in noncombat aircraft accidents, and a stunning 15,000 killed in stateside training.” (http://laurahillenbrandbooks.com/discussion-questions/)

That means that 51,000 of our nation’s young men died in accidents or plane malfunctions—the primary culprit: the planes they were flying were absolute garbage. The waste of our military men was abominable. Louis’ trial was no different, ordered to fly a rescue mission in a plane that was no more airworthy than the box a homeless person might sleep in, it was no surprise it went down. Once Louis avoided a similar situation by challenging his CO to join their mission.

What follows is the most compelling and astounding survival story I’ve ever experienced. There were three survivors of the initial crash. During their forty-seven days drifting in the life raft fighting off sharks and surviving the elements, it became clear why Louis was gifted his indomitable spirit. They drifted two thousand miles to the Marshall Islands and were rescued by the Japanese. The Japanese saved the remaining two men, provided medical care, then spent the next few years torturing and terrorizing them, making the sharks look like cuddly koalas.

The depth of Laura’s research is astounding, all done during a time of illness in her own life. Her writing is clear and well structured. Events flow freely in an unembellished, in an utterly compelling way. She tells Louis’ story without making it Laura’s story. I love to think critically about books, and I can find nothing to complain about—a feat, indeed.

I closed this book feeling like a bit of a wuss. I like to think of myself as a survivor of sorts. I like to think I’m tough. I know now, that I don’t know. Maybe I am. Maybe I could endure torture and the dehumanizing effects of hostile captivity and retain my loyalty to to my country and fellow soldiers. Maybe, but probably not. I have not ever really suffered, not in my childhood, not in childbirth—not like so many others have. I have a renewed respect for the heroes of war and the people who fight for our country today. I am humbled.

My favorite picture of Louis is one of him learning to skateboard—in his seventies.

Sparks at the Park

A giggle erupted from Berzo. She peeked at her shadow on the wall of the slide then propped herself up to face me. Another giggle shook her frame. Her face was alight with mischief, her hair stood out in all directions and swayed with the breeze as she she reached out to touch me.

'No, no... Don't touch me!'

ZAP!

"OW! That was a good one."

Berzo's hair is flat now as she climbs up the slide and slides down, again and again, until the shadow of her hair reveals she is "fully charged." Then, once again, she comes for me.


***********
Berzo and I finished our grocery shopping and in keeping with routine we stopped at a park to play. After playing a couple rounds of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus I was seeking something else—anything else, when I pointed out her baby-fine hair sticking out in all directions. I lightly brushed the levitating ends with my hand and she tried to grab me to pull herself up. I pulled my hand away and said, “Oh no, I can tell by your crazy hair that you’d give me a good shock!” Her quizzical look gave me a flash of inspiration. Time for a physics lesson kiddo! Summoning my inner Faraday I sifted through the jargon in my head and found an explanation comprehensible for a four-year-old.

"When you slide down the rubbing of your clothes against the plastic slide creates... [one piece of relevant jargon should be OK] ...static electricity. When your hair is sticking up I know you have a lot of static built up and if you touch me—zap! Ouch! Can you see your hair in the shadow? OK, now touch me…"

ZAP! Acck! I really hate being shocked, and these zaps pack a punch. I wished it was dark so she could see the spark.

Explanations of atoms, electrons, ions, insulators of plastic and cloth, and magnetism all flashed through my head, but as a credit to my self control, I set them aside in lieu of play. I know from my own childhood how these early, fun experiences will lay the foundation for learning about these topics academically later in life. Spinning on merry-go-rounds, swinging, teeter-tottering, bouncing a ball, static—all swirled in my mind as I sat in my twelfth-grade physics class. I wanted to do my best to make this experience stand out in her memory.

On and on she went, up and down the slide building a charge, checking her shadow to see her hair voltmeter, with me dancing around but eventually submitting to the ZAP! Occasionally I’d be out of reach and she’d jump off the slide and to her disappointment, no ZAP! I took the opportunity to explain grounding in four-year-old ease, “The static electricity drained right into the ground as soon as your feet left the slide, it doesn’t insulate like plastic. HA! HA! You didn’t get me!” Which sent her right back up the insulator/slide to recharge herself.

It made me wish I had a pocket full of paperclips, so we could play with the relationship between electricity and magnetism. With a her hair in spikes I wonder how many paperclips we could get to stick to each other—if the charge was great enough to get even one.

My diabolical plan worked. She enjoyed shocking me until I finally had had enough and raced her to the climbing tree. I think the lesson stuck too, because later that day at one of her famous “trampoline parties” she was chasing and zapping her older sister and friend. I rescued them by wetting the trampoline mat down… Then I asked Electra if she’d like a swimsuit so they could play with the hose and squirt guns.

Whether or not Electra is a superhero or supervillain is yet to be determined...

Losing Uncle John

One morning, I was sipping my coffee and merrily scrolling through FaceBook, when a post from Patence stopped me cold. Her father, my Uncle John, passed away the night before. My throat cramped, my stomach turned to lead, I let my forehead rest on the table. Through blurry eyes I read the message again. It still said the same thing that he was no longer in pain, his long battle with cancer was over, and he was at peace.

Wow it hurt, despite only having seen Uncle John a handful of times in the two decades since I left home. He's not even my “real” Uncle—although I have always thought of him as such. I know he's been sick for years, but he just seemed to keep on, keepin' on.

I selfishly hoped he would.

A little backstory:
From the time I was not-quite-two, my Dad and Karla were together, a relationship that would last for about seven years. My brother and I became step-siblings to her two kids, Lew and Regina. Lew and I were the same age as were Regina and Reed. Later, Karla told me it was like have two sets of twins. Being a mother of two kids, four years apart, I fully grasp the hair-graying complexity of that situation.

Always next-door was Karla's sister Kerry and her husband John and their three kids, Patence, Josh and Johnnie. Together we formed a pack of seven kids, almost outnumbering the grown-ups two-to-one—it was awesome. We roamed Blue River like a pack of feral puppies, acquiring more loose puppies along the way. I was the runt of the pack, but made up for it with sheer feistiness. I never lacked for playmates, fishing buddies, or fellow explorers. We'd organize epic games of hide-and-seek, freeze-tag, and smear the queer. (We all took turns as the queer—so really it was an empathy building exercise.) We'd get in trouble together and take our whuppins together. On warm summer nights, all seven of us would sleep in a row in cartoon themed sleeping bags under two huge sequoia trees.  I'll never forget how it felt waking up full of the smells of trees and earth while my head rested in the coolness of my dewey pillow.

I never felt alone.

Dad and Karla's tumultuous relationship was not to last. My Dad, my brother, and I moved to a duplex in Rainbow, Oregon. Suddenly, I felt alone—a lot. I missed my step brother and sister. I missed my cousins. I missed Karla, Aunt Kerry and Uncle John. I worried that I wasn't part of the family anymore.

John and Kerry hosted many a summer BBQ and after hurts were healed my Dad and Karla settled into an easy friendship. The first time we went to one, post break-up, I walked in feeling the outsider, trying to blend in with the foliage, until I was spotted by Uncle John and Aunt Kerry. Uncle John's face lit up, “Amy! how are you doing, darlin?” and gave me that warm hug that he was famous for. He was a tough ex-Marine, Vietnam Vet, man of the woods and all the hard labor thereunto, and also one of the warmest people you could ever hope to meet. Kerry followed up with a hug and a kiss.

I was home, they were still my people. My heart was warm and full. I ran off to join my pack.

Although in reality all of this is likely a composite of a dozen different occasions, later that day around dusk, John was playing his guitar and singing with his eyes squeezed shut while Kerry was close by his side swaying to the music and joining her voice with his in all the right moments. In my faulty memory it was “Danny's Song”-although it was probably something much cooler.

Uncle John is a hard man to say goodbye to.

John's children, Josh, Johnnie, and Patence & Co., organized a memorial for him over this past weekend. The first speaker, George, talked about how Jesus was sent for us ragamuffins—people that are a rough around the edges and full of mistakes, a sentiment that always resonated with me.

 He told a wonderful story about a time when John treed himself. John, George and Gary all logged together and one day John decided he was going to climb a particular tree, saying something like, “I believe I'm going to climb that tree now,” while George and Gary looked on. Up and up John went until he froze with fright. After many colorful attempts made by both men on ground to get John to climb down, Gary loudly announced, “I guess it's time we start the back-cut.” Gary fired up his saw and told John to, “Just try to jump off as the tree is coming down.” George said Gary even started to cut into the tree a bit, then John chose “fear over death” and scuttled down the tree. George felt that was an apt analogy for life.

I cried when Johnnie talked about how her parents were soul mates. Indeed, John & Kerry were always together, something I remarked to Charley recently—you never got one without the other, they even shared their birthday. I'm a little worried about Kerry now, but she told me her family is taking exceptional care of her—I believe it. 

I laughed when Johnnie said that when she was cooking for their family Sunday dinner and every week John would say, “‘Sissy don't tell me where having pork again,’” to which she told us, “So I stopped telling him—but we still had pork.” Looking skyward she said, “Sorry Dad, it's pork again.” referring to the delicious pulled pork that awaited us as the picnic.

Patence told wonderful stories about untying his boots after a long day logging or hauling, and how he'd save the treat from his lunch and leave it in his box, Zoo-Zoos or Ding-Dongs. Then after unlacing his boots for him, the kids would raid his lunch box for the treats they knew he saved for them. He did the same thing with his grandkids. After a long day at work, Papa always had his dessert saved for them. Occasionally, he'd be hungry enough not to have saved it, but the disappointed faces of his grandkids drove him to ask Kerry to run to the store and get them replacements. Patence said, “That's when I knew he had gone soft.” I think he always had a soft-spot when it came to kids, but it certainly got bigger when the beautiful faces of his grandkids appeared.

Nearly everyone else who spoke echoed my feelings about how John would light up when he saw you, like you made his day for no other reason than existing and crossing paths. It is a wonderful and rare quality to find in a person.

I soaked up every word, letting them float among my memories. Berzo squirreled on my lap and telling me time and again how boring it all was. Again I was feeling the outsider, but soon the talking was over and we got up to mingle. The many smiles, hugs and quick conversations drove those unfounded feelings away and I fully relaxed into the moment.

I was home, they were still my people. My heart was warm and full.

When it was time to go, I didn't want to...

Goodbye, Uncle John, may God have saved a place for you as special as you made each of us feel during your time here. I love you.