For One Piece of Bread
A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Search for Truth
For One Piece of Bread is more than a memoir. It is Mary B. Relotto’s deeply personal account of being separated from her birth family in Italy, growing up in America, and spending decades searching for the truth about where she came from—and why.
Born in northern Italy, Mary B. (then Barbara) was placed in a Catholic institution shortly after birth and adopted by an Italian American family in Ohio at just two and a half years old. Like many children of that era, she grew up believing she had been given an opportunity for a better life. But as she grew older, questions about her identity, family, and origins remained.
Those questions led Mary B. back to Italy.
For more than 30 years, she returned again and again in search of answers. Her journey eventually brought her face-to-face with her biological family, including her birth mother, Anna Maria. What Mary B. learned changed the way she understood her life forever: her mother had not simply abandoned her. She had been living in severe hardship and did not have the resources or support needed to keep her children. As Mary B. has shared, her mother told her she did not even have “a piece of bread” to give them.
A personal story within a larger history
Mary’s experience is part of a broader and painful chapter in post-war Italian history. Between 1950 and 1970, thousands of Italian children born to unwed mothers were sent to the United States on orphan visas through programs connected to Catholic institutions. Many of those children were not orphans in the traditional sense; their mothers were alive, often facing poverty, social stigma, family pressure, and limited options for raising a child.
In July 2026, 60 Minutes revisited this history in its updated report, “The Vatican’s Orphans.” The report examined how approximately 3,500 Italian children were sent to America during this period and featured Mary’s continuing relationship with her Italian birth family. It also explored the lasting impact on adoptees and mothers whose lives were shaped by separation, missing records, and unanswered questions.
Mary B’s story was also featured in the original 2024 60 Minutes report, alongside the work of author and journalist Maria Laurino, whose book The Price of Children documents this adoption system and the people affected by it.
The journey behind the memoir
In For One Piece of Bread, Mary B. Relotto shares her story in her own voice. She writes not only about adoption, but also about the complicated realities that can surround it: love and loss, gratitude and anger, family and separation, identity and belonging.
Her memoir honors the people who shaped her life in both Italy and America, while refusing to look away from the system that separated families when support, compassion, and practical help may have made it possible for them to stay together.
Mary B’s journey is not a simple story of reunion. Reconnecting with biological family after decades apart can bring joy, grief, cultural differences, language barriers, and difficult questions. Yet it can also create space for healing, understanding, and a fuller sense of self.
Resilience as a superpower
At its heart, For One Piece of Bread is a story of adaptation. Mary B. Relotto has built a life as an author, entrepreneur, educator, and community advocate, drawing on the resilience she developed through every chapter of her journey.
Her story invites readers to consider what it means to belong, what truths may be hidden inside family histories, and why every person deserves the chance to understand their own beginnings. It also asks us to remember the mothers, children, and families whose stories were shaped by a time when poverty and social stigma too often determined a child’s future.
Read Mary B’s story
For One Piece of Bread offers an intimate, courageous perspective on a history that continues to affect families across Italy and the United States.
It is a memoir for adoptees, birth families, adoptive families, advocates, and anyone who believes that truth—however difficult—can be a path toward connection and healing.
Discover Mary B. Relotto’s story and the journey behind For One Piece of Bread.
