Norma Sommerdorf

Norma Sommerdorf loves to read and research about people and times of the past. She frequently writes about it too, and Ramsey County History Magazine and Minnesota History have published her articles. She prepared biographical essays for the "The Privilege for Which We Struggled," about leaders of the women's suffrage movement in Minnesota. In the works is a novel about a family coming down from Canada on the Red River Trail in 1846.

Norma Sommerdorf was born in a small town in Iowa, the setting of her book, An Elm Tree and Three Sisters. As a child she lived in Wisconsin, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Alberta, Canada. She came to Minnesota for college, and has an A.A from Bethel College and a B.S. in Social Studies from the University of Minnesota. She has been a librarian, managed the Governor's Residence, and owned a Travel Agency. She and her husband have four adult children and have hosted numerous international exchange high school students.



					Red River Girl Holiday House, 2006 ISBN 978-0-8234-1903-6 It’s August 1846 in the northern Midwest territory and Josette Dupre has just turned thirteen. The daughter of a French trader and an Ojibwe woman, she has bigger dreams than most girls of the day, dreams of traveling East for a higher education. But her hope of fulfilling these dreams comes to an abrupt halt when her mother dies.



					An Elm Tree and Three Sisters illustrated by Erika Weihs Viking Children's Books, 2001 all ages, ISBN 978-0-670-89308-9 Growing up on their midwestern farm, Mary, Mabel, and Molly can see to the flat horizon in all directions. "What this place needs is a tree," they decide, and so they plant a tiny elm. Over the years as the sisters grow up, marry, and have children of their own, their elm grows with them, weaving itself into the fabric of their lives. When the tree finally succumbs to disease, three new sisters-their great-granddaughters-are there to plant a new tree so the story can begin again. Author Norma Sommerdorf heard this story from the real Mary, her mother's cousin, while workmen were cutting down the old elm. Her simple, poetic retelling, joined with Erika Weihs's evocative folkstyle paintings, celebrates and continues the life of the tree, and the family it belonged to.