From the author of the bestselling & much-loved Seabiscuit an unforgettable story of one mans journey into extremity. On a May afternoon in 1943 an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean & disappeared leaving only a spray of debris & a slick of oil gasoline & blood. Then on the ocean surface a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant the planes bombardier who was struggling to a life raft & pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenants name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood hed been a cunning & incorrigible delinquent breaking into houses brawling & fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager he had channelled his defiance into running discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics & within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come the athlete had become an airman embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight a tiny raft & a drift into the unknown. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean leaping sharks a foundering raft thirst & starvation enemy aircraft & beyond a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope resolve & humour; brutality with rebellion. His fate whether triumph or tragedy would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. The long-awaited new book from Laura Hillenbrand Unbroken is a gripping account of human endurance & the resilience of one remarkable individual.