Ann Cornelisen, 77; American Wrote on Southern Italy’s Poverty

Ann Cornelisen, 77, an expatriate American author whose experiences as a social worker in a poverty-stricken village in southern Italy formed the basis of many of her books, died of undisclosed causes Wednesday at her home in Rome, Ga.

The Cleveland-born, Chicago-reared Cornelisen, who earned a degree from Vassar College, moved to Italy after a failed marriage in 1954 to pursue archeology. Instead, she went to work for the nonprofit British Save the Children Fund.

The nonfiction “Torregreca: Life, Death, Miracles,” published in 1969, is her first and best-known book. A Time magazine writer called it “an exquisite nonfiction novel of sensibility.”

Other books include “Vendetta of Silence” (1971); “Women of the Shadows” (1976); “Strangers and Pilgrims: The Last Italian Migration” (1980); “Any Four Women Could Rob the Bank of Italy,” a novel (1983); and “Where It All Began: Italy, 1954” (1990).