Author of ‘Seabiscuit’ endures rough ride

Seabiscuit’s rise to fame with a one-eyed jockey aboard captivated a Depression-weary nation. Sixty-five years later, it still inspires Laura Hillenbrand to rise each morning.

The movie version of Hillenbrand’s bestselling book, “Seabiscuit: An American Legend,” will be released by Universal Films in select theaters on July18, with a nationwide opening on July25.

For Hillenbrand, it is the culmination of an exhausting, elating time of her life.

She wrote “Seabiscuit” one line at a time while looking away from the computer screen, steadying herself against the growing sense of vertigo and trying to force out another sentence.

Some days she finished just a paragraph before becoming exhausted. Other days, the room spun out of control after she typed just a few words. It took Hillenbrand, 35, one year to write the book after three years of research done from her home in Glover Park.

Hillenbrand overcame her 16-year duel with chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome — commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) — to finish her book, and it is a condition that continues to haunt her.

She won’t attend the glamorous Hollywood premiere. She never participated in any book signings, even though “Seabiscuit” has sold more than 2 million copies and still sits atop the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction paperback. She even skipped book reviews and stories about the film because reading makes her vertigo worse.

The illness leaves her mostly housebound, but the book has opened new worlds for her. Hillenbrand now talks of Hollywood celebrities by their first names. She’ll watch the movie with President Bush and the first lady at the White House on July21. Former president Bill Clinton gave her book as a wedding gift. Comedian David Letterman reads passages to his staff.

“I’ve lost a lot to this illness,” Hillenbrand said. “It’s deprived me of everything but the inside of my bedroom for the last 16 years. But I can’t say that I’m whining about it. There’s 2.5 million copies of the book out there.”

Mystery illness

As a teen riding in Bethesda, Hillenbrand dreamed of becoming a jockey. She swam, cycled and played tennis and studied to become a history professor.

Then came a severe wave of nausea on March 22, 1987, while she was on her way back to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, after spring break. Paramedics said it was food poisoning. It wouldn’t be the first misdiagnosis.

Hillenbrand was unable to get out of bed for two weeks, and she soon dropped out of college. She returned home, where she quickly lost 22 pounds. She saw a series of doctors, whose diagnoses ranged from Epstein-Barr virus to eating disorders to mental illness. Finally, a doctor at Johns Hopkins diagnosed her with chronic fatigue syndrome.

Months later, CFS was officially recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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