Letters From Rifka is a children's historical novel by Karen Hesse, published by Holt in 1992. The novel is based on the life of Hesse's great-aunt Lucille Avrutin. With an intended young adult audience, the book aims to inform and validate. Letters from Rifka details a Jewish family's emigration from Russia in 1919, to Belgium and ultimately to the U.S. The protagonist's name, Rifka, is the East European Jewish version of Rebecca (Rivká in Modern Israeli Hebrew). Karen Hesse earned several awards for Letters from Rifka, including the Sydney Taylor Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Phoenix Award. Source: Wikipedia (en)