Imagine opening a book and finding your ancestors names inside. Too good to be true, right? But not impossible. Recently, I began working on a friend’s genealogy brick wall—a spot at which she was just stuck. I highly recommend this; just swap brick walls and see what happens! This brick wall ancestor had a common Irish surname, and details were scarce. After running through my usual checklist of genealogy site searches with no luck, I searched the name in Google Books. Lo and behold, I find a story about this ancestor heading to America in 1826 only to be shipwrecked on an island, where he and his shipmates remained for three months until being rescued by a passing ship. Besides this amazing story of survival, it also included details about his marriage soon after arriving in the US, his parents, and subsequent children. Jackpot!