Rosalba Santoro, born in 1933, was an elementary school teacher in the hills of the Abruzzo region of Italy, where she was born and lived virtually her entire life. She had no children and lived as a widow after her husband’s sudden death in 1988, retiring at the end of the 1990s. After her death, members of her extended family found her diary, containing entries dated from 1950 to 1998 (many entries undated), and brought it to Saggiatore, a publishing house known for bringing out unusual types of literature.