Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrandis an American author of books and magazine articles. Her two best-selling nonfiction books, Seabiscuit: An American Legend and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption have sold over 10 million copies, and each was adapted for film. Her writing style is considered to differ from the New Journalism style, dropping verbal pyrotechnics in favor of a stronger focus on the story itself...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth15 May 1967
CountryUnited States of America
He exhibited tremendous intelligence. And he liked to mess around with his opponents on the track. He didn't just want to beat them. He really wanted to break their hearts ... He would let them get ahead for just a minute and then turn it on and crush them.
I was starstruck and completely confused; making a film of this story hadn't even occurred to me, and I hadn't written a single line of the book yet. I had no idea how this man knew anything about my book proposal.
He was a very difficult animal. This was a horse who, if you pulled the right rein he'd go left.
The following Wednesday, I opted to go with Random House.
Most people, when they hear the disease name, it's all they know about it. It sounds so mild. When I first was sick, for the first 10 years or so, I was dismissed. I was ridiculed and told I was lazy. It was a joke.
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.
This disease leaves people bedridden. I've gone through phases where I couldn't roll over in bed. I couldn't speak. To have it called 'fatigue' is a gross misnomer.
I spent one frenzied day interviewing producers, and ended up choosing Universal and Larger Than Life productions. It all happened in two days.
Louie and Seabiscuit were both Californians and both on the sports pages in the 1930s. I was fascinated. When I learned about his World War II experiences, I thought, 'If this guy is still alive, I want to meet him.'
It was so demoralizing to lose my body and begin to realize that my whole future may be set on its ear. The thing that helped me was, instead of spending my life thinking about how I can get over (CFS), now I spend my life thinking about how to get around it, and how to succeed in spite of it.
It only worked for a little while; the morning after I agreed to go with Universal, an article came out in the Hollywood trade papers, and the secret was out.
A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.
Having a lot of people suddenly depending on me to get the job done was a marvelous motivator. The book and movie deals seemed to flip a switch in my head, and off I went
Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison