In ‘Sorrows,’ Ordonez says in his introduction to the book, “the stories are expectedly sad and poignant as they deal largely with failed or truncated relationships between adults, their inability to really connect, whether it is between the narrator and character or between the characters themselves.” Still, despite the sorrows experienced by the characters, “the reader cannot but help empathize” with them. The stories contain life lessons, told from the perspective of “a mature person,” says Ordonez, “who apparently has seen it all—as an academic, an observant neighbor, a part of the corporate world, an ardent listener to gossipy friends, and a person who has loved and lost but realizes it is just as well with no regrets as in Edith Piaf’s song ‘Je ne regrette rien.’”