In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.
When I was young, I read everything I could lay my hands on, but the Scots in my storybooks spent their time fighting glorious battles, rowing across lochs, or escaping over moors of purple heather. Even those Scots were hard to find. For at school, we recited poetry according to the set texts the teachers taught us.
What I try to do - and I think this is the former librarian in me - is to get primary source material.
