Her mother was a founder of the Mizrachi Women's Organization of America, a religious Zionist group, her father was in the garment business.
She attended Girls High School in Brooklyn and took her bachelor's degree in philosophy from Adelphi College in 1937.
[1] In her early career she worked for CBS radio and did some magazine writing under the pen name of "Rhoda Roder.
[4] She won the Golden Kite Award for non-fiction twice: in 1986 for Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun and again in 1988 for The Incredible Journey of Lewis and Clark.
In 1951, they moved from Brooklyn, New York, to a small farm in Westchester County, where she lived the remainder of her life.