"Thirty Years in a Well is the amazing true story of Fitzgerald Washington Beauregard, who spent thirty years of his life in a well."
--Cover blurb
"Fitz" as he prefers to be called, fell into a well when he was seven years old. No one looked for him because he was a child from a wealthy family and they could always make more children because of the additional active sperm made available to the weathly prior to the American Civil War
Living on rainwater (as the well was gone bad and had been abandoned), brown rice from a pot that had been thrown into the well, cocaine (which was stored there by dealers who had been killed in a skirmish during the war), and rats, Fitz made it until 1879, when he finally was rescued by a group of diehard Confederate types who refused to surrender. He was then hung from a tree. It wasn't any kind of racial thing, in case you were thinking that just now. It was because Fitz's dad was their commanding officer and he'd surrendered at the end of the war and then screwed them over on a land deal.
There are many questions as to when this book was actually written. There are questions about who the author was. Fitz was not an educated man who could have penned a document like this in the first place, since he'd been in the well during the normal educational period of the American youngster. So, when did he write it? Were there also writing tools in the well? The book says he was hung right after getting pulled out of the well. He had to had written the book while IN the well.
This raises a lot of questions. Most of the questions raised pertain to how Fitz could have written this book and some of the others involve his use of modern phrases like "Surfing the Web" and "Trying the new flavor of Doritos." We also have to wonder how Fitz could have written about things that happened during and after his hanging. How did he know that his second cousin's daughter would seek him out and bring his body to the family tomb? This leads us to question the legitimacy of the book. We have to wonder at its origins, which when these questions are considered have to be considered sketchy at best. Ibid.
One of the reasons it is important to check the sources and fully research the material you read and view is because you can be conned by these kinds of "true life" stories. It really is appalling that this book was being sold by some guy at the bus station out of a sooty burlap bag and promoted as a true story of heroism. I'm not even sure where the heroism comes in. The guy was in a well for thirty years and then got hung by some guys when he came out. I see no signs of heroism. I also see many reasons why this book cannot possibly exist beginning with the issue of when he could have written it. People, you HAVE to have critical thinking skills. It is infuriating how easily some of you people are conned on a daily basis.
My review of the book is simply "False" and I give it no stars. You can never be too sure about the quality of the books you are handed by soot-covered strangers over the course of your life. Some are really good books. Others are more like Thirty Years in a Well, a true failure of the written word as art form and a true disappointment in general. I wouldn't refuse to accept books and used clothing items handed to you by these kinds of strangers, but I would exercise caution. Their offerings tend to be very hit or miss. People who write fantastic and ridiculous tales and try to pass it off as being the real story of their life are the worst kinds of people on the planet and we need to begin shunning them until the legal system catches up with the issue and put them in prison. We seriously need to take umbrage at this point.