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Born the son of a minor railway employee, Francesco Ormini spent his early years in a succession of railway stations along the coast of Sicily. At 16, after his father was imprisoned for protesting the new fascist government's opressive labor policies, Ormini moved to Milan where he took a job with a printer publishing leaflets for a local group of anarchists. These leaflets often contained Ormini's own poems and fiction which espoused his early ideas on liberty and social equality. During World War II, as the grip of Mussolini's iron fist grew tighter on Italian society, Ormini's writings brought him into the ranks of the Italian resistance. By constantly moving the base of his publishing operations from basements, to dentist offices, and restaurant kitchens, Ormini and his group of resistors managed to evade the authorities until 1942 - at which time word got out that Ormini's girlfriend, Allegra Martinelli, was collaborating with the German Gestapo. Narrowly escaping arrest, Ormini and twelve other members of the intellectual resistance fled to the Alps. In their camp, with very few resources at their disposal, Ormini and his group wrote their anti-fascist leaflets by hand, placed them in bottles and sent them floating down the rivers and tributaries which flowed from the Alps to the Italian countryside. During this time, Ormini wrote several plays which he and his group would stage around the campfire in order to communicate and solidify their political beliefs. After the war, Ormini returned to his homeland where he reunited with Allegra Martinelli and fathered her child, Christina. However, in 1947 when his daughter was less than a year old, Ormini was stricken with pneumonia and died.