Historical Deviations
The story is a fictionalized representation of the historical events that happened, although the setting can be considered quite accurate. The character names are mixed up in the novel, for example, the main protagonist William Pierce is changed to Edward Pierce, and Edward Agar to Robert Agar. Crichton admitted he did not want to be constrained by what actually happened. The true story of the robbery can be found in the book by David C. Hanrahan: The First Great Train Robbery (Robert Hale, 2011).
Read more about this topic: The Great Train Robbery (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word historical:
“The proverbial notion of historical distance consists in our having lost ninety-five of every hundred original facts, so the remaining ones can be arranged however one likes.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)