The answer to this question can be found in Chapter 1. A child becomes an orphan when both parents are killed. This happened to Maniac Magee when he was 3 years old. His parents were out for the evening, and they were killed in a trolley accident when it careened off of a bridge.
On the way back home, they were on board when the P & W had its famous crash, when the motorman was drunk and took the high trestle over the Schuylkill River at sixty miles an hour, and the whole kaboodle took a swan dive into the water.
Fortunately, Maniac Magee wasn't without family. He has an Uncle Dan and an Aunt Dot. The problem is that Uncle Dan and Aunt Dot hate each other, refuse to share anything, and never talk. They also refuse to get a divorce because they are strict Catholics. Their relationship...
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continues to deteriorate for the next 8 years, and by that point Maniac has had enough of it. He runs away from them and the town in the middle of the school concert never to return there again. He shows up a year later in the town of Two Mills.
In Jerry Spinelli’s book Maniac Magee, Jeffery Lionel Magee is orphaned at the age of three. While the child, who comes to be known as Maniac, is at home with a babysitter, his parents are killed in a high speed trolley accident. The trolley, which was being driven by a drunk trolley man, plunged off a bridge into a river in Pennsylvania.
After the accident, the child is sent to live with his aunt and uncle who are not happy to be saddled with his care. The two, who live in a loveless marriage, rarely speak to each other. Eight years after the accident, Maniac has endured enough and runs away from his relatives. He lives off the land for a year until he arrives in the segregated town of Two Mills where his reputation grows. The rest of the story chronicles Maniac’s new life.