User:Beltwaybub/sandbox

Beltway Bub: Tripping on Truth in the 1960s & 70s, by Warwick J. Knox, is a fictional novel based on the author's experiences while growing up in the Washington DC suburb of McLean, Virginia during the 1960s and 70s. The story examines the life of a boy (Riddick Kellow - a.k.a. Bub,) who, becoming a man succumbs to life's pressures after concluding that much of what he was taught about God and his country was not true. That causes him to undergo a thorough introspection whereupon he realizes that other root causes for his failures, such as unwanted physical and personality traits, have led him to acquire a syndrome he defines as "rejectionism," for lack of a better word.

Content
In the opening preface, Knox explains how some bad medical news caused him to undergo a subsequent introspection at the age of forty-two, the results of which inspired him to eventually complete this novel. The book opens with a prologue which explains the development of the main character, "Bub," and how his dad's career path finally landed "the Kellows" inside the Capital Beltway (Interstate 495.) As the story begins in 1966, Bub eludes to fitting in with the coolest kids in Vienna, Virginia. Since the most popular kids always bothered him the most, and they are preppies in Vienna, he transforms himself from a greaser into a preppie. Then, as the story progresses and his family moves to McLean, he finally falls in with the hippies who, like him, start to take pride in the term "social reject." While experiencing the Psychedelic Era, Bub partakes in civil unrest while enjoying drugs and alcohol, until he finally finds himself caught in a web, spun from his spite and misguided passions. From that point on, it's upon Bub to constantly identify and change his deeply devastating thought patterns, and those trials and tribulations become the fruit of this story.