In her autobiography, Courage of Innocence, Ann Federici Martin, 94, writes the saga of her family, which descends from the Etruscan people of northern Italy. The Etruscans were an ancient culture that not only flourished during prehistoric times but also contributed much in the way of language and architecture that helped shape modern-day Rome. It is this hearty Italian bloodline that enabled the Federici family to contribute culturally in Cimarron, where Martin grew up.

"My parents lived on a mountain in northern Italy where all the houses were made of marble," explains Martin. "There was too much stone, so it was hard to even sustain a small vegetable patch. That's when my mother said to my father, 'We're not going to raise our family here,' so they immigrated to America."

With the determination of true Etruscans, Narciso and Divina Federici moved to Cimarron in 1914, where they built an opera house. Narciso Federici built it from stone that he quarried himself from the surrounding hills so that people could enjoy the Italian arias of his youth. Later the building was used as a dance hall and silent-movie house. While her husband was busy at work on the opera house and their ranch, Divina raised the couple's four children.

Ann Federici-Martin was born in 1914 in the back room of the Cimarron Opera House. Martin's account of her early days on the ranch, as revealed in her new book, reads like an Italian version of Annie Oakley's story. As Martin remembers, "I used to ride around the ranch with my father in his pickup, shooting rabbits that would get caught in the cattle guards. My father would say to me, 'If you miss that rabbit, we won't have anything to eat for supper tonight.' So I got to be a pretty good shot, and sometimes I'd bring home two or three cottontails a day."

Martin would also help her father take care of the pregnant cows. As she explains, "When a cow is about to deliver its calf, it wanders away from the herd. So I had to keep on eye on them, because the coyotes would go after those cows and attack them when they were giving birth. I would say that I killed at least 500 coyotes in my day."

While honing her skills as a sharpshooter, the little Italian girl quickly grasped the language of her neighbors.

"I had to learn Spanish so that I could play with the other children," she says. Martin didn't realize it at the time, but learning Spanish helped shape her destiny. "I met my husband, Curtis, when we were at school," explains Martin. "He was having trouble in Spanish class, so I tutored him, and we fell in love."

Curtis and Ann Martin were married for 65 years, and during that time were separated only during the three years that he was stationed overseas during World War II. "Those three years were very hard. I missed Curtis deeply. We wrote to each other every day, and we had to number each letter so that we could keep track of them because the letters would often arrive 10 at a time. At the end of the war I had an entire shoebox filled with his letters," she remembers.

With Curtis back from the war, the couple had two sons, Brooke and Curtis, who today have blessed Martin with two grandchildren. While Curtis was working on his Ph.D at Harvard, Ann stayed home and cared for the children. "We decided back then that only one of us could get an education, so Curtis was the one to study," says Martin.

It wasn't until almost 40 years later that Ann went back to school. When she was 68, she received bachelor's degrees in both Italian as a second language and in fine arts. After graduation, Martin's lifelong dream of becoming a sculptor working with stone, like her father and his father before him, became a reality. Martin also became a painter and had an art show of her work two years ago.

The family spent a good deal of time traveling, often to far-flung destinations like Tasmania, but it was going back to northern Italy that had the most profound effect on Martin. It was there that she saw first-hand the fine marble sculptures of her Etruscan ancestors, which helped her mold the adventures of the Federici family in New Mexico into her book. A book signing for Courage of Innocence will be held 2 to 3:30 p.m. Friday at the Rosemont Assisted Living Center.

Ana Pacheco is the founder and publisher of La Herencia, a culture and history magazine (www.herencia.com, 505-474-2800). Her weekly tribute to our community elders appears every Tuesday.