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Louis (Louie) Zamperini’s life reads like the most fantastical drama you’ve ever known and yet every word of this amazing life story is true and well documented in history. Louie went from being a troublemaking California youngster to an Olympic runner in the 1936 Olympics in Germany. Then WWII came along and sent him to the Pacific as an Army Air Corpsman only to end up with his plane crashed and clinging to a tiny raft with two other men floating for weeks fighting starvation, sharks, weather and attacks by Japanese bombers. Sounds like a challenge? That’s only the beginning of this incredible biography. Louis Zamperini is still alive today and reading this book inspired me to research further this man who seemed to have an almost limitless determination to survive whatever life could throw his way. One of the best biographies I have ever read – highly recommended.

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Tin was born on a Thursday, and so was fated to wandering.  His older sister, seven-year-old Harper, can hardly blame him for wanting to escape: the family is mired in poverty, their land is barren, the new baby cries all the time.  Tin burrows into the earth to get away from it all, digging elaborate subterranean tunnels, his eccentricity tolerated—even overshadowed—by his family’s larger problems.  In lyrical, heartbreaking prose, Harper weaves her family’s struggle and Tin’s surreal underground existence together into a dark and dreamy tale.