Sally Salminen

Finnish novelist Sally Salminen was born in Vårdö, Åland, Finland, in 1906, the eighth of 12 children. Even as a young child she had wanted to become a writer, but thought that she was too poor and uneducated to succeed in that field. A Catholic, she was confirmed at approximately age 12 and went to work in a local grocery store. She stayed there until she found a job in Sweden as a maid, and moved to Stockholm. While there she took correspondence courses and immersed herself in reading books, something she hadn't the opportunity to do in Finland.

In 1930 she and her sister traveled to the US, where Sally secured work as a maid in New York City, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

While in New York she began writing when she had the time, and the result of that effort was her first novel, "Katrina"; in 1936 a publisher announced a writing contest, she submitted her manuscript and it won. The novel, about a young woman who moves to a remote Finnish town after her marriage, became a worldwide best-seller, and was translated into more than 20 languages.

In 1940 she married a Danish painter, Johannes Dierkop, and moved to Denmark. She continued writing, but unfortunately none of her efforts matched the success of her first novel. Her brother Runar Salminen was also an author and poet, her brother Uno turned out a trilogy of well-received novels and her sister Aili also wrote several novels.