‘How could my mother leave her baby and then kill herself?’: author Maria Grazia Calandrone’s quest for answers

‘I wanted to write about my mother and all the other women who have suffered the same injustice’ … Maria Grazia Calandrone. Photograph: Valeria Scrilatti

On 24 June 1965 a young woman sat her eight-month-old baby girl on a blanket in the gardens of the Villa Borghese in Rome, and walked quickly away. Within minutes, a passerby spotted the tiny child, alone, with no identifying documents, no note, not even a name. When the mother did not return to claim her that evening, the baby was handed over to the nuns at Rome’s adoption services. Three days later, the mother’s body was found floating in the Tiber.

Before she died, the woman had sent a letter to the press, containing a brief account of the terrible choice she had made. The letter, handwritten, gave the baby’s name and date of birth, and concluded: “Finding myself in a desperate situation, I have no other choice than to leave my daughter to the compassion of all, And I with my friend will pay with our lives for what we did, or, got right or, got wrong.” The letter was signed “Lucia Galante, now Greco”. Her “friend” was presumed to be the baby’s father, whose body surfaced in the river a week later.