Her father was a well-known writer of Jewish children's literature and an early proponent of Hovevei Zion, a pre-Zionist movement, and later of political Zionism.
Her older sister, Judith Ish-Kishor, was a pioneering writer of Jewish children's literature in English.
She wrote widely, and was published in several magazines, including The New Yorker, Saturday Review, and Reader's Digest.
Her now-classic story of a long-distance correspondence and its fateful conclusion, "Appointment with Love," was published in a 1943 edition of Collier's and was subsequently plagiarized by preacher-author Max Lucado (as "The Rose") in a 1992 collection.
[1] It portrays a father whose abusive treatment of his child contrasts with the Jewish values he claims to promote.