About the Author

DIANA RUZZENE GROLLO was born in Mure, a village 30km north of Venice, in 1948, as Italy and the Veneto region in particular, began to rebuild their social and economic base in the aftermath of the devastation of the Second World War which had hit the Veneto population particularly hard.

Diana was the fourth of six children born to Maria and Giovanni Ruzzene, a survivor of the ill-fated Italian army campaign in Russia. She was delivered by the district's midwife, in her parent's snow covered, brick paved cottage on a cold winter night under the light of an oil lantern.

Diana, her mother and her two sisters and three brothers were reunited with father Giovanni in Melbourne in 1955 where Giovanni had migrated four years earlier. After a happy, though economically deprived childhood in Italy, the author lived through the toughest years of Italian immigration in Australia from primary school to adulthood. In 1970 Diana married Rino Grollo. They had four children. In 1993 Diana graduated, majoring in History, from La Trobe University. It was during her time at University as a mature student, that the idea of her first book began taking shape.