The Madrigal

Meet Frederick Madrigal: the seventh son of a struggling woman on welfare who already had three sets of male twins spaced two years apart. A one-time child prodigy, Frederick was the subject of the benevolent index finger of God. While his older brothers ran wild, the sensitive and musically gifted Frederick began to sneak out of the house to sing for spare change in front of city bars and nightclubs, his repertoire learned from his mother's secret midnight singing. Through the intervention of a number of well intentioned benefactors, he ends up in a church choir, and from there, at the age of twelve, is drafted into a choir school in Toronto. He's happy to go, and leaves his mother and brothers behind without a thought. But just after his eighteenth birthday, in public, Everything Crashes Down, and in another miraculous escape, he chooses against his musical destiny. In mid-life, Frederick is deliverer of Canada Post mail; teacher of Voice; keeper of secrets; caretaker of his...