"Unbroken"'s Louis Zamperini-- Part 4: The Book

Laura Hildebrand discovered Zamperini when she read a 1938 newspaper clipping while researching for her 2001 best-seller "Seabiscuit" about a Depression-era racehorse.  Over 7 years, she conducted hundreds of hours of interviews over the phone (she is unable to travel because of chronic fatigue syndrome).

Before this, Louis Zamperini had published two autobiographies of his own, but Hillenbrand wanted to tell the story of World War II in the Pacific through the eyes of one man.

It was a huge responsibility to have Zamperini and his fellow POWs recount their stories as she would hear them weeping over the phone.

After her book "Unbroken" was published, she began receiving thousands of letters and e-mails from family members saying often, "I never understood why my father or my husband or my grandfather, what he went through, why he was in so much pain, why he drank."

Zamperini, then 94, and Hillenbrand did meet once in 2011 in Washington, D.C..  "It was one of the best days of my life," she says.  "He threw his arms around me.  We talked and talked."  Later that afternoon, she walked him to his car and he said, "I know now the reason why I have lived this long--it was to see you write this book."

I would like to see a follow-up book and movie and his life after the war.

--GreGen