Seizing the imagination of the people in the year 1938, the racehorse Seabiscuit occupied more space in the newspapers in America than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. The Seabiscuit is a story of an overlooked and undersized Thoroughbred racehorse that became a sensation and uplifted the spirits of the whole nation during the Great Depression in 1930s and ’40s in America. But, the moment she finished writing the Seabiscuit in 1999, the struggle took its toll, leading to the total collapse of her health. Ultimately, however, her indomitable will prevailed over the disease, and she completed her first book, Seabiscuit: Three Men and a Racehorse. When vertigo was extremely bad and she couldn’t look at the screen, she would take a pen and paper in her hand and write with her eyes closed. Writing left Laura dizzy and nauseated everyday. Vertigo made reading and writing exceptionally difficult. The affliction made her feel “as if the floor was pitching up and down, and making the things around appear moving when actually they were stationary”. The worst came when she was hit with the whirling vertigo. In no time, the disease affected every moment of her healthy and athletic life: for several years she remained completely incapacitated and bedridden, couldn’t bathe herself, sitting up was a big struggle, and would remain down with fever. Normally, I write book reviews and through the books I introduce the authors but for Laura Hillenbrand, I’m compelled (and delighted) to depart from the tradition and write first about her courageous life and then her two outstanding books, which together have sold 13 million copies, both having been made into films.īorn on in Fairfax, Virginia, USA, Laura Hillenbrand was afflicted with severe CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) since the age of 19.
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