First We Quit Our Jobs: How One Work Driven Couple Got on the Road to a New Life

What happens when two executives leave their jobs, friends, and the city behind to hit the road in a twenty-seven foot RV? America the beautiful becomes a place of sights, foods, people, memories, and a little wisdom.



After fifty-two combined years in the corporate fast lane, Marilyn Abraham and her husband, Sandy MacGregor, embarked on an adventure that every work-driven professional dreams about but hardly ever has the courage to realize. They quit their jobs and hit the road in order to retrain themselves in the art of living. For almost a year, the couple traveled nearly 20,000 miles to thirty-one states, including Washington, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Tennessee, and through seven Canadian provinces to Alaska, in the hulking RV they named Sue.



More than just a travelogue, First We Quit Our Jobs is the story of recreating one's life and discovering what is real, what is true, and what is important. Filled with visions of Americana, this personal and touching memoir traces the author's search for meaning in this modern day.

Just a few months shy of his 20th anniversary at RCA, Sandy MacGregor got his pink slip. Once the shock wore off, he and his wife, Marilyn J. Abraham, then a vice president and editor at Simon & Schuster, did what any rational couple with more than fifty-two combined years on the corporate fast track would do: they traded in the boardroom for the open road and embarked on a four-month trek across America. First We Quit Our Jobs is Abraham's account of their odyssey. Granted, a Winnebago was not their first choice when the bad news came, but after an attempt to buy a small publishing company in New England fell through, MacGregor and Abraham packed their bags and went in search of their destiny.

Part travelogue, part meditation, and part guide to "the road not taken," First We Quit Our Jobs is a charmingly written chronicle of discovery. As MacGregor and Abrahams began to depart from the way they'd always assumed their lives would go, they found the freedom to shape the way they'd like their lives to be.