Outside Providence is a hilarious yet melancholy novel of a young man's coming of age in the 1970s. When Timothy Dunphy, native of working-class Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is packed off to a fancy prep school, he finds that the privileged elite is hardly immune to life's screwups. Dunphy must reconcile his pedigreed schoolmates with his mongrel friends back home--including Drugs Delaney, whose diet consists mainly of vitamin Qs (Quaaludes), and Bunny Cote, who thinks New England is a state. Not far below Dunphy's comic demeanor churn powerful fears of abandonment by those he loves best: his mother, his girlfriend, and his closest friend. And he must come to terms with his complex relationship with the person he hates most, his father. As he struggles to live with the paradox of somehow loving the same man he blames for his family's tragedies, Dunphy begins to understand and accept life's betrayals, and learns how to trust in love. e Providence is a hilarious yet melancholy novel of a young man's coming of age in the 1970s. When Timothy Dunphy, native of working-class Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is packed off to a fancy prep school, he finds that the privileged elite is hardly immune to life's screwups. Dunphy must reconcile his pedigreed schoolmates with his mongrel friends back home--including Drugs Delaney, whose diet consists mainly of vitamin Qs (Quaaludes), and Bunny Cote, who thinks New England is a state. Not far below Dunphy's comic demeanor churn powerful fears of abandonment by those he loves best: his mother, his girlfriend, and his closest friend. And he must come to terms with his complex relationship with the person he hates most, his father. As he struggles to live with the paradox of somehow loving the same man he blames for his family's tragedies, Dunphy begins to understand and accept life's betrayals, and learns how to trust in love. e Providence is a hilarious yet melancholy novel of a young man's coming of age in the 1970s. When Timothy Dunphy, native of working-class Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is packed off to a fancy prep school, he finds that the privileged elite is hardly immune to life's screwups. Dunphy must reconcile his pedigreed schoolmates with his mongrel friends back home--including Drugs Delaney, whose diet consists mainly of vitamin Qs (Quaaludes), and Bunny Cote, who thinks New England is a state. Not far below Dunphy's comic demeanor churn powerful fears of abandonment by those he loves best: his mother, his girlfriend, and his closest friend. And he must come to terms with his complex relationship with the person he hates most, his father. As he struggles to live with the paradox of somehow loving the same man he blames for his family's tragedies, Dunphy begins to understand and accept life's betrayals, and learns how to trust in love. Peter Farrelly is a screenwriter and director, and the author of the novel  Outside Providence.  He attended Providence College and Columbia University. Peter and his brother Bobby are known for directing gross-out comedy movies such as Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, Me, Myself and Irene , and others. Dildo, that's what my old man called me. Dildo Dunphy. I remember when he dubbed me. It was a muggy day in the summer of my ninth year and I'd run inside his radiator shop to borrow fifteen cents for a frozen lemonade. The old man blotted his forehead with the back of his hand and leaned against the counter, the tiny blood vessels on his nose gorged red with rancor. He scowled over a bogus Jimmy Fund bucket and said, "Until you earn it, Dildo, just stay the hell out of here! " My Christian name is Timothy Brian Dunphy and I was born and raised in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a rotting city bleeding off an anemic river just north of Providence. The old man loved Pawtucket. Claimed it had flavor. I couldn't argue with that; the city smelled like a sour-cream-and-onion flavored potato chip, on account of the Choo-Sum junk food factory a mile upstream. Factory City, U.S.A., that's what Pawtucket was called in her prime. My old man and brother and I lived on the first floor of a seventy-year-old triple-decker perched above the tire-and-barrel-strewn banks of the Blackstone River. The apartments above us had been condemned and were occupied by bats. Life as we know it had left the Blackstone years earlier, although occasionally there were rumors that someone had spotted a three-headed frog or a giant Siamese carp swimming near one of the factories. I never swam in the Blackstone. My mother hadn't lived with us since November 22, 1963. That's when she blew her brains all over our garage. Don't let the date weigh you down; it's not the reason, just fueled her mood. On our front door was a handgun-shaped sticker that read: FORGET THE DOG--BEWARE OF THE OWNER. The neighborhood consisted of Nielsen families, I suppose. Another lady on my street committed side-sui; my next-door neighbor was doing time for being an accessory to a murder; a