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

I identified in a very deep way with the individuals I was writing about because the theme that runs through this story is of extraordinary hardship and the will to overcome it.

And at that point, I think my experience in covering the subject helped me. I think editors felt comfortable with the idea of me telling this story because I had demonstrated that I know this business pretty well

When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him.

A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.

This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.

We just sat there and watched the plane pass the island, and it never came back," he said. "I could see it on the radar. It makes you feel terrible. Life was cheap in war.