The Boundless

The Boundless is another fine product of Kenneth Oppel’s fertile imagination. Cornelius Van Horne, Donald Smith, and Sam Steele are historical figures and Smith’s flubbing of the Last Spike on the CPR line through the Rockies at Craigellachie were real events. Sasquatches remain mythical creatures and it is doubtful a single-engine train the length described ever made it through the inclines of the Rockies. Oppel is probably too young to have known that first class cars were normally placed at the rear of a train away from the noise, smoke and dirt of the engine and tender cars and the freight cars up front, the reverse of his description. The tension between a son’s dreams and a father’s expectations is a universal story.