The plot of Such Quiet Girls is based on historical events in California in 1976. On Thursday, July 15th, 1976, a school bus driven by Frank Edward Ray was intercepted by three armed men while driving near Chowchilla. 26 students between the ages of 5 and 14 were aboard the bus at the time. The men used pantyhose to disguise their facial features (a detail that Ihli incorporates into her novel). The men drove to a riverbed area where they forced Ray and the students to board a van. The windows of the van had been painted over to prevent anyone from seeing in or out. The kidnappers, who were subsequently identified as James Schoenfeld, Richard Schoenfeld, and Frederick Newhall Woods IV, drove the van to the California Rock & Gravel quarry near the town of Livermore.

The kidnappers had fashioned a bunker out of a truck trailer and buried it in the quarry. The children and the bus driver were forced to descend into the makeshift bunker. The opening to the bunker was covered with sheet metal and weighed down by heavy industrial batteries. After the kidnappers left the scene, Ray and several of the older children stacked the mattresses that were provided in the bunker to reach the top and were able to dig an opening through the debris. Ray and all of the students were able to climb out of the bunker and walk to a nearby ranger station. With police assistance, the children were reunited with their families.

While the dramatic escape effort was unfolding, the kidnappers’ plans had been foiled: Due to the overwhelming number of calls flooding the line to local police, the kidnappers were unable to call and issue their ransom demands. While waiting, they fell asleep, and by the time they awakened, Ray and the children had escaped. Once the children and Ray met with the police and described what had happened, the police quickly identified Frederick Newhall Woods IV as a person of interest. Woods’s father owned the quarry, and the former thus had keys to the quarry and free use of its facilities.

Police also quickly suspected that the Schoenfeld brothers might be working as accomplices, since they were known to be friends of Woods. They obtained a search warrant for the Woods’ family home, where they located journals, a draft of the ransom demand, maps, notes, plans, and other incriminating materials. This evidence led to arrest warrants for all three men: Richard Schoenfeld voluntarily surrendered 8 days after the kidnapping, and the other two men were located and arrested over the course of the next several weeks. All three men came from wealthy families but lacked the finances to carry out their dream of purchasing and restoring a grand Victorian mansion (the Rengstorff House), located in Mountain View, California.

The three men pleaded guilty to kidnapping for ransom and robbery and were sentenced to life in prison, although they were paroled in 2012, 2015, and 2022. Frank Ray was lauded as a hero who kept the children calm during their ordeal and provided leadership that was key to their successful escape. He died in 2012, and in 2015, Chowchilla renamed the Sports & Leisure Park as the Edward Ray Park. Many of the children displayed symptoms of trauma in the decades after the kidnapping. They filed a lawsuit against their kidnappers, and in 2016, the 25 survivors received payouts from Woods’s trust fund.