Taju Rantalainen described her close relationship with her father, the painter Tyko Sallinen, in her book Isä ja minä, 1957. She grew up in southern Finland, was married three times, twice to the same man. She tried her hand at graphics, but suffered from mental problems, which after the war developed into mental illness.
Her debut novel Kaksi tietä was published in 1939, but her main work is the novel Unissakävijä of 1943, about the contrast in her childhood milieu between Bohemian life and religiousness and the reaction and response of women to the sexual morality of society.