Dust Bowl Survivor at Book Signing Today

Norma Welty didn't own a computer until she was age 80.

Today, seven years year later, the self-described "late bloomer" has made the most of her computer: Welty has penned her debut book called "The Dirty Days." It's a historical novel based on her life growing up dirt poor on the dusty plains of Oklahoma during the 1930s Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, she said.

Welty, of Maplewood, will host a book signing  at 2 p.m. today (Saturday) at Barnes & Noble at Har Mar Mall in Roseville.  Her website says the book is an Editor’s Choice on Barnes & Noble.

A press statement gives this background on Welty:

Norma Welty grew up in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl during the Great Depression.  She left her family’s tenant farm in the early 1940s, moving to Oklahoma City, where she worked as a genuine Rosie the Riveter in a local defense plant.  There, she met her future husband, Robert, a soldier.

When the war ended, she and her husband moved to western Wisconsin where Norma modeled professionally, earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, then taught high school English for twenty-one years.  At retirement, she moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where she lives today.