Everyone in town thinks Meg Murry is volatile and dull-witted, and that her younger brother, Charles Wallace, is dumb. People are also saying that their physicist father has run off and left their brilliant scientist mother.
Actually, MurryMom is from Murrysville. This is a suburb-of-a-suburb of Pittsburgh. (Not the ritzy Fox Chapel section of the well-heeled and presidential contenders.) In Murrysville, the SUV's are more plentiful than squirrels.