Roger Rosenblatt is by all accounts a successful writer. As the author of 15 books and a columnist for Time magazine, PBS and the Washington Post, he has won an Emmy, a Peabody, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and two George Polk Awards. But when his 38-year-old daughter, Amy, died suddenly of a rare heart abnormality, Rosenblatt found himself overwhelmed with grief. He also found his most important reason to write, he says. His new book exploring her death and his sorrow, “Kayak Morning,” is a follow-up to his first, “Making Toast,” and is now a best-seller. He and his wife, Ginny, live in Bethesda with Amy’s husband and three children. Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
No. I don’t think I ever did. My mother and father were Jewish, but they were the kind of Jews who wanted to assimilate very quickly. We had a Christmas tree. There were some aspects of Judaism in my upbringing — Sunday school, I remember — but nothing that was sincerely devoted. So I didn’t grow up within a religion.
