Leonilde Frieri Ruberto was born in Cariano, Avellino, Italy. She completed the fourth grade, married, worked, and raised four children before she and her family emigrated to Pittsburgh in 1954. Encouraged by one of her daughters, and prompted in part by the destruction of her home village in the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, she wrote her life's story. All who have been uprooted from their homes can identify with this Southern Italian woman's saga - marked by acceptance of hardship and the poetic memory of the village in which she was born and to which she could not return.