On June 22, 1943, Louie Zamperini floats in the Pacific Ocean along with two other crewmen from a crashed bomber during World War II. They drift on two rafts for 27 days and float over one thousand miles. The men are emaciated, starving, and covered in sores. Sharks swim around them.

Louie is 26 and “one of the greatest runners in the world” (2). He and his crewmates were searching for a lost warplane when they crashed.

The men attempt to signal a plane with flares and dye in the water. After the plane flies past and turns back the men realize it’s a Japanese bomber. It opens fire on them and they jump into the water. It returns after they surface. Louie’s companions are too weak to swim and remain on the raft as Louie jumps again into the shark-infested water.

The German airship Graf Zeppelin tours the world in 1929. It passes over New York City, Europe, where Anne Frank is just born and Adolf Hitler begins his ascent to power, then Siberia and Japan, and finally the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, California, where 12-year-old Louie Zamperini lives.

Louie, born in 1917, descends from Italian immigrants. Throughout his childhood, he is rambunctious and tough to control.