It’s the birthday of critically acclaimed nonfiction author Lauren Hillenbrand (b. 1967). Her first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for 42 weeks. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010), a biography of war hero Louis Zamperini, was on the bestseller list in hardcover for so long that the publisher didn’t bring out a paperback version for four years. (Publishers are like that.) Hillenbrand’s own story of living with debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome has often been considered as compelling as the stories she writes.

Hillenbrand was born in Fairfax, Virginia, and grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, spending weekends on the family farm in Maryland. She was the youngest of four in a family that felt less and less like a family as she grew up. Her father was a World War II vet who wouldn’t talk about his wartime experiences; he was a powerful lobbyist in Washington and was often absent. Her mother and father separated when she was about nine, and the older children were already moving on to college. By high school, Hillenbrand was alone with her mother, who was somewhat depressed and withdrawn.

Visiting a sister at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, Hillenbrand felt enfolded by her sister’s friends. She began attending there herself the following year. However, her sophomore year she was suddenly and violently hit with the symptoms of a mysterious illness. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t stand up, and within several weeks dropped out of school. Doctors thought it was all in her imagination or had theories that were way off (heartburn, an eating disorder), and friends and even family didn’t believe she was really sick, thinking she was lazy or faking. She was finally diagnosed at Johns Hopkins. Hillenbrand wrote an award-winning essay about the early years of this illness in her award-winning New Yorker essay, “A Sudden Illness” (2003).

Hillenbrand learned to focus on her work while living with symptoms like severe vertigo that sometimes confined her to home for whole years at a time. Some of her work-arounds have brought unexpected richness to her writing. For example, she was unable to go to libraries to read old newspapers on microfiche (and would not have been able to read the microfiche anyway), so she would buy the newspapers on eBay and read them at home. While reading articles on Seabiscuit, she would find herself immersed in other news and gossip of the day, even reading the ads, and in this way gained a deep and detailed understanding of the times she was researching. And in this way, she also accidentally ran across an article on Louie Zamperini, a young running phenomenon. She noted his name and told herself that when she was done with Seabiscuit, she would look into Zamperini.

Have a fine and focused Tuesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.