Listen to the Light: Stories of Interruptions, Intersections and Insights

In this collection of stories and essays, unexpected events of everyday life become a springboard to examine deeper layers of meaning. A bowl shattering for no apparent reason leads to musings about other abrupt endings, a chance encounter engenders a new friendship, a meeting with a Catholic nun provokes reexamination of faith. Freda Warrington's humorous and ironic approach yields nuggets of wisdom - whether she explores her Jewish roots, relates cheese blintzes to love, reflects on old age, worries about how to enjoy her fancy Hermes scarf, or traces the amazing history of a tallcase clock heirloom. Her stories remind us that not everything can be explained away: There is wonder and mystery at the core of our being, enriching our lives in surprising, magical ways.

Freda Spector Warrington's stories are sad, funny, poignant-and real. As vignettes that startle with truths remembered, or voices that pause to let us catch up on insights at once strange and familiar, they entertain and engage us with a kind of quiet elegance. — Hermione de Almeida Walter Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature The University of Tulsa

Freda Warrington’s work is impressive. It has a mystical, almost Biblical quality. She recreates the past with exactitude while using it to leverage our understanding of the present. To experience her writing is to know everything about the inequity of longing and loss. But her stream of prose catches us in eddies of hope, and therein lies all the difference. — David Colman, writer, editor, publisher