Can you start off a review with Wow?
Unbroken, a memoir, was truly one of the best written memoirs I have read in a long time. I read many books and I enjoy reading about other people’s lives and how they’ve gone from loss to victory, from pain to joy, from alone to fulfilled. We can learn so much from studying the lives of other people. There’s always lessons packed in these books from what we should do to what we should not do. I always love when a person makes a quality decision that they will no longer live a mediocre life dictated by others, but instead step up to the plate and make the changes necessary to be the director of their lives. I found that in the life of Tracy Elliott, the author of Unbroken.
What was most admirable about this book was the transparency and truth throughout the pages. The reader gets just enough detail to relate and understand the situation, but it never went to a point of detail where it was uncontainable and distracting. This life story was written from the heart and in the language and thoughts of ‘the girl next door’. Tracy Elliott’s story did not get lost amidst big words and fancy talk – which is why you felt like you knew her personally by the end of page one. It’s one of those books where a week later, you still have scenes from the book pop into your head of this woman’s life and you stop and think, ‘nobody should ever have to live that way.’
It usually can take a while for me to finish a book due to my non-stop life. I tend to read books before I go to bed, so the majority of the time I get a couple chapters in a night, but I finished this book in three days – I just couldn’t put it down.
When you first meet Tracy at age six, you want to scoop her up and take her to a place where she will be safe. A place where she can bake chocolate chip cookies with her mom, play dress up with her dolls or just have the chance to be a little girl with her only worry being, can I have dessert before dinner?
This book details Tracy Elliott’s life living with an alcoholic mother who dies when she is just six years old, to living with her grandmother in a house with her 5 uncles, grown men, who would be drunk for weeks on end, physically and verbally abusing her in more ways than one. Her two brothers were scattered and her grandmother was her life. School was a routine she looked forward to, with friends and teachers who helped take her mind off of her reality. Church played a role in her life as well as a relationship with Jesus, starting at a young age.
After Tracy’s grandmother passed away, when she was in high school, she really didn’t feel like there was anything to live for. Her parents were gone, her brothers were elsewhere, school was almost over, and all she had left at the house she grew up in were alcoholic and abusive uncles. So the story goes…she began living a life that wasn’t pretty. From hanging out at the bars with a lady from church, to becoming a stripper, living on the streets or using the floor of a new acquaintance as her temporary home, using drugs and becoming an alcoholic herself – by the time she was 24 she had lived a life most people never see.
The only thing – the whole time she never lost touch with her relationship and belief in Jesus. Now, she may not have been living the life Jesus would want her to live, but He never stopped loving her. After all, His death, burial and resurrection happened for people like her.
Through many decisions, choices and struggles, Tracy came out of her lifestyle that she had been living her whole life. She married, had children and grew close to God. I found her honest and pure quest for God and His Wisdom very humbling. And throughout the pages of this book, you will see that as she searched and asked, God was always there to answer and help her be the person He created her to be. She even won the title of Miss Texas in 2006 and went on to compete in the Miss America Pageant.
This is truly an inspiring story of survival and victory over evil, circumstances and life itself. Tracy embraced God and He embraced her back. Her desire to seek and understand God and how she is to intertwine His wisdom in every area of her life has caused her to get answers and direction. She’s willing to listen for His voice, even when it isn’t the answer she expected or wanted. That’s a pure heart.
For all those who have the mindset that you have to live with the ‘hand your dealt’, this book is for you. It will negate that kind of thinking and show you that nobody has to settle for a lesser life than He created us to live. This book proves that if you let your life take control, you will live a life of defeat, but if you take control of your life and seek the counsel and direction of the giver of life – then you will be an overcome.
