Author of the week

Jason Rosenthal

Millions of readers know Jason Rosenthal through his late wife, said Nara Schoenberg in the Chicago Tribune. In March 2017, Amy Krouse Rosenthal published an essay, “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” as a “Modern Love” column in The New York Times. The piece was essentially an extended personal ad for Jason, written because Amy, a children’s author, knew that ovarian cancer would soon end her life. She died just 10 days later, which briefly made Jason perhaps the most famous widower in America. Initially, he didn’t pay any attention to the 1,000 or so letters and emails sent his way, about 300 from women taking Amy’s offer literally. “I was just deep in the throes of my own grief,” Jason says. But the outpouring, which has never fully stopped, couldn’t be ignored forever. In 2018, he wrote a response for the Times, “My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me.”

The message of that column, and of his new memoir of the same name, is that Amy’s essay was a gift, said Karen Heller in The Washington Post. And not because of the women who wrote in extolling their looks and talents, fun as some of their letters were. What meant more was that she had given him permission to begin anew, which he did by stepping back from his legal and real estate career to start a foundation in Amy’s name, give more time to family and friends, and become a public speaker on grieving. Near the end of his book, Jason reveals that he has also been seeing someone, who of course has missed none of the story. “Anyone who’s going to be with me,” he says, “knows that Amy’s got a piece of my heart, always.”