Mariuccia “My denied love” is an astonishing and touching novel. At the centre of this novel are Mariuccia and Antonio, two lovers from a village in the south of Italy. They are victims of a typical prejudicial reality of the retrograde south. Mariuccia is the daughter of a modest family and subjugated by a master father. Antonio is the son of a highly esteemed lawyer. In a hypocritical society full of thin-lipped disapproval, Mariuccia will learn that saving appearances is a must. In fact, at the age of fifteen, she falls pregnant and gives away her baby, coerced by her aunt whom had long emigrated to America. She flies to New York to give birth and painfully goes through the experience of the adoption process. Her aunt persuades Mariuccia not to tell anyone about the baby so to avoid a moral and social scandal. Even Antonio is unaware about the fruit of their passion love. So, his life carries on. He becomes an engineer and travels the world on business. Mariuccia is haunted by the birth of her son, decades earlier, and his subsequent adoption. She calls him Antonio, after his father. Her head is full of memories: of her life in the 60s as a young mother and a dressmaker for a living, and of the love denied between her and Antonio, the man who had stolen her heart. The most remarkable thing about this novel, full of characters and embarrassing situations, is the humiliating-mortifying picture of a certain way of life of a bygone era. There is also psychological aspect of this incredible novel that is based on the values shared by the members of a southern underdeveloped society. In particular, the concept of preserving virginity until marriage. That’s just how it was back then.