This book was written by Grazia Deledda, an Italian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island (i.e. Sardinia) and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general". In this book, Deledda writes about the tale of a mother's love through Oli, who had to turn to prostitution and abandon her only son Ananias.