A New Year of Bookenders

Bookenders book group will get together at the library on Wednesday, September 28th at 7 p.m. The featured book for the evening is Unbroken:A World War II Airman's Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. The discussion will be led by Eloise Fugal. 

Everyone is invited to attend.

We will also be choosing the book selections for the coming year at this meeting. Plan now to attend and bring suggestions on great books for discussion.

Unbroken is the inspiring true story of a man who lived through a series of catastrophes almost too incredible to be believed. 

Louie Zamperini

In evocative, immediate descriptions, Hillenbrand unfurls the story of Louie Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero. During a routine search mission over the Pacific, Louie’s plane crashed into the ocean, and what happened to him over the next three years of his life is a story that will keep you glued to the pages, eagerly awaiting the next turn in the story and fearing it at the same time. You’ll cheer for the man who somehow maintained his selfhood and humanity despite the monumental degradations he suffered, and you’ll want to share this book with everyone you know.  

Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand was born on May 15, 1967 in Fairfax, Virginia. She spent much of her childhood riding bareback "screaming over the hills" of her father's Sharpsburg, Maryland farm. She studied at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio but was forced to leave before graduation when she contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which she has struggled with ever since. She now lives in Washington D.C., and rarely leaves her house because of the condition. On the irony of writing about physical paragons while being so incapacitated herself, she says, "I'm looking for a way out of here. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he's breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives - it's my way of living vicariously."

Hillenbrand married Borden Flanagan, a professor of Government at American University and her college sweetheart, in 2008.

She is the author of the critically acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend, which spent 42 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, in hardcover and paperback. It was made into the Academy Award nominated film Seabiscuit. After this success it took her almost a decade of research and writing before Unbroken was published.

Hillenbrand is a co-founder of Operation Iraqi Children, a charitable program created in 2004 to send school supplies to Iraqi children.