Initially immersing readers in the life of a closeknit, largely Italian family in an ethnic neighborhood in the cultural and historical milieu of the city of Providence in the 1960s, Providential becomes the story of an intellectual, vocational, and spiritual journey, and of an education. Featuring formative experiences; vignettes drawn from Catholic schooling, Scout camp, university studies, and teaching; and sketches of the kind of powerful teachers and mentors and friends everyone needs in their lives, Providential follows a path of learning to be, in the words of Thomas Merton, "what we are."
