Leonilde Frieri Ruberto was born in Cairano (province of Avellino, Italy) in 1913. She completed the fourth grade, married, worked, and raised four children before she and her family emigrated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1954. She died in Sound Beach, New York, in 2000. 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.