The Search

The Search Plot Summary

Introduction

The morning sun streams through the window as Maria stares at her resignation letter. After fifteen years climbing the corporate ladder, she feels hollow despite her impressive title and salary. Something is missing - purpose, meaning, alignment with her deepest values. Maria isn't alone. Across America, millions are questioning traditional definitions of success and seeking work that offers more than just financial security. They're rewriting their work narratives, transforming careers into vehicles for personal meaning and social impact. This fundamental shift represents one of the most significant cultural transformations of our time. We're moving from a means-based economy, where work primarily provides material resources, to a meaning-based economy, where work expresses our authentic selves and contributes to a better world. Through intimate portraits of individuals who've reimagined their relationship with work, we'll explore how personal narratives shape professional identities. These stories reveal that the most successful people aren't those who follow predetermined paths, but those who craft careers aligned with their unique histories, values, and aspirations. Their journeys offer a roadmap for anyone seeking to transform their relationship with work.

Chapter 1: Breaking Free: The Myths We've Been Sold About Work

The morning sun filters through the blinds as Brijette Peña sits at her kitchen table, surrounded by hundreds of tiny seed packets. Her journey to this moment began in Baldwin City, Kansas, where she grew up in a working-class family with modest expectations. "I would be the first in my family to get a four-year degree. I would get a nine-to-five job. I would work my way up the economic ladder," she recalls of the path laid out before her. But Brijette wanted something different: "I wanted to be happy." Her path took unexpected turns. After falling in love with plants while watering mums in a greenhouse, she studied ecology in Costa Rica, met her future husband, and followed him to Southern California. When job hunting proved difficult, she volunteered at a farm that hosted schoolchildren. Watching a third-grader pull a carrot from the ground with pure excitement sparked an idea: she would start a seed company in Southern California's perfect growing climate. The journey wasn't easy. Seed-cleaning machines were scarce and expensive, so Brijette took a job managing a gardening company to save money. Life seemed stable until tragedy struck—her brother and mother died in separate car accidents within five months. During this period of grief, Brijette faced workplace sexual harassment. When her boss failed to address the situation, she made a bold decision: "I made a vow that with my unemployment and my husband's salary, I had a year to make the seed company work." Two years later, San Diego Seed Company was selling three hundred varieties and shipping three hundred thousand packets annually from Brijette's living room. Her decision represented a fundamental shift happening across America—a rejection of traditional career paths in favor of work aligned with personal values. "Each of us gets to write our own American Dream," she reflects, "And the bliss that awaits at the end is being able to say, I did everything I could to be fulfilled." This story illustrates a profound truth: we're witnessing an unprecedented shift in how people approach work. For the first time in history, Americans are quitting jobs at record rates—not just during the pandemic but as part of a two-decade trend. People are taking control of their work lives, redesigning their roles, and prioritizing meaning over traditional metrics of success. We're moving from a means-based economy to a meaning-based economy, where the script of success is being rewritten by individuals rather than institutions.

Chapter 2: Finding Your People: The Power of Mentors and Community

Troy Taylor was born in what he calls "the smallest independent country in the Americas," Saint Kitts and Nevis. His father, a carpenter, taught him the value of showing up every day regardless of circumstances. But it was his mother, a college professor and the family's primary breadwinner, who shaped their trajectory when she accepted a position at the City University of New York, bringing seven-year-old Troy to the Bronx. Fascinated by aviation, Troy studied aeronautical engineering at Penn State. His first post-graduation interview at Boeing gave him pause: "I walked into this giant room and saw all these desks in a line, and at the front was an office. My entire life flashed before my eyes. You start at the first desk, then move to the next desk, then the next, until one day you make it to the office. I thought, I'm looking at the next thirty years of my life." Instead, Troy joined GE, designing satellites for NASA. "The real job was learning discipline and how to break insurmountable tasks into their individual parts," he explains. This approach served him well as he moved through various roles at GE, eventually turning the company's worst division into a $250 million profit center. His success led to an opportunity at Johnson & Johnson, where he built a team of one thousand employees across four continents and transformed an industry also-ran into a $2 billion juggernaut. After nearly twenty years of corporate success, Troy felt buried by his responsibilities. Concerned about becoming "an absolute dick" and wanting his children to know him before college, he walked away from the corporate world. Recalling a boyhood passion for graphic design, he opened an art gallery in Atlanta specializing in underrepresented artists telling narrative stories. "I want to be a custodian for cultures that are about to be lost," he explains of his current mission. Troy's mentor once gave him advice that became his motto: "Forget the ladder; embrace the smorgasbord. At every turn, I either want to create something from nothing or take something from worst to first." His journey demonstrates that finding your people—mentors, colleagues, family—shapes your path in profound ways. The people around us influence not just our career choices but our definitions of success and fulfillment. Their wisdom, support, and example create the context in which we discover our own unique contributions to the world.

Chapter 3: Timing Your Leap: Recognizing Moments for Change

Cathy Heying grew up in a large Catholic family in small-town Iowa, the youngest of seven with eighty-three first cousins. From her mother, who became a disability activist after her first child with Down syndrome was denied Communion, Cathy learned a powerful lesson: "It doesn't matter if you're raising six other kids; if there's a fight to be had, you have the fight." After earning a social work degree, Cathy's path took her to Kentucky, then Minneapolis, where she found a home at Saint Stephen's Catholic church. She loved the church's inclusive politics and followed when it spun off its social justice arm. She earned a master's in ministry, bought a motorcycle, and settled into what seemed like a stable life. Then came her moment of clarity. Working at a shelter, Cathy kept hearing variations of the same story from people seeking help: "I work on this side of town. I have a second shift on the other side of town. I don't get off until eleven o'clock at night and there's no bus service. But my car is broken down and I can't afford to repair it." One night, a man named Sidney asked for help pushing his car to a new parking spot. "It was his residence," she explains. "When he filled out forms, he listed his address as 1994 Nissan Maxima Drive." With just $203 monthly in government support, Sidney couldn't afford car repairs at $50 an hour. "I kept thinking, Minnesota is joked about as being the land of ten thousand nonprofits. We are generous and hardy souls. Somebody needs to do something about this," Cathy recalls. "That's when it hit me. This was my burning bush moment. Just total clarity that that somebody was me." Despite knowing nothing about car repair, Cathy—in her late thirties with two degrees—enrolled in a two-year automotive maintenance program at Dunwoody College of Technology. The timing of our major life decisions is often the most overlooked element of success. Cathy's story illustrates how recognizing the right moment to leap requires both external awareness and internal readiness. She founded Lift Garage, providing automotive repair for those in need at just $15 an hour. In its first decade, Lift served 1,300 customers, completed 3,000 repairs, and saved customers over $1.1 million. Cathy was named a CNN Hero—all because she recognized her moment when it arrived, embodied by "Sidney, who lived on Nissan Maxima Drive."

Chapter 4: Crafting Your Purpose: From Personal Pain to Meaningful Work

Isiah Warner grew up in Bunkie, Louisiana, population 4,656, where a railroad track literally divided white and Black residents. The local post office featured a mural called "Cotton Pickers," and indeed, Isiah picked cotton every summer, earning five dollars a day. "My first mentors were those cotton fields," he reflects. "My hands would be bloody, and I don't like bugs. But the caterpillars would crawl all over me and cry out, Go to college!" Despite attending a segregated school with no science labs and six-year-old textbooks, Isiah won a full scholarship to a historically Black university. He thrived in college, met his wife, and majored in chemistry. After graduating, he accepted a job in Seattle at a contractor for the Atomic Energy Commission—his first airplane flight. Though plagued by discrimination and self-doubt, Isiah persevered when his supervisor, an Asian American sensitized to being an outsider, encouraged him to pursue a PhD. Isiah earned his doctorate in three years instead of the usual five. He turned down Bell Labs because there were eight inches of snow on the ground when he visited, opting instead for academia. After facing discrimination at Texas A&M, he moved to Emory, then LSU, where he became one of forty highest-ranked professors and the only Black person among them. Under his guidance, LSU has awarded PhDs to one hundred Black chemists, compared to just three before his arrival. Yet even as a worldwide expert in fluorescence with over 380 peer-reviewed publications and a presidential award from Bill Clinton, Isiah still encounters racism. When he named a group of compounds GUMBOS (group of uniform materials based on organic salts), a reviewer called it "ridiculous," unaware that gumbo is an African American word. "I'm not the kind of person who complains, but that was racism," he notes. Isiah's story reveals how crafting meaningful work often means defining success on your own terms. While chemistry is his profession, his life's work is mentoring scientists of color. "I love helping young people find their Yellow Brick Road," he says. "I think of myself as Dorothy." His journey demonstrates that what we do—our purpose—is ultimately about impact rather than title or status. When his mother visited his home for the first time, she said, "Son, I've spent my whole life cleaning houses. I've never even been in a house as nice as yours." In that moment, Isiah knew he was "no longer an impostor."

Chapter 5: Building Your Portfolio: Hope Jobs, Ghost Jobs, and Passion Projects

Richard Scarry's classic children's book about Busytown depicted a world where everyone had a single, clearly defined job: Stitches the rabbit was the tailor, Charlie the mouse was the baker, Zip the raccoon was the postman. Each character was traditionally gendered, gleefully happy, and gainfully secure. But this tidy vision of work life no longer reflects reality—if it ever did. Today, no one has just one job anymore. Everyone has multiple jobs, and not all of them show up on a résumé or pay the bills. When asked how many jobs they had, people in the author's research reported an average of three and a half, with a quarter saying five or more. These aren't all traditional paying positions—they include what the author calls "hope jobs" (activities people pursue hoping they'll grow into something bigger) and "ghost jobs" (invisible emotional labor that feels like work). Morgan Gold knew from childhood that he wanted to draw comic strips. After college, his path took unexpected turns through corporate videos, insurance company communications, and eventually a role as managing director of marketing for a $65 billion investment company. "Cash ruled everything in my life," he recalls. "I went from living in a trailer park to living in a rat-infested apartment in Hartford, to thinking, Wow, I can buy a crazy town house in Washington, DC! As soon as that happened, I realized, Whoa, this life kind of sucks." Seeking an outlet, Morgan began studying regenerative agriculture and started gardens at his home. When he and his wife purchased a 150-acre run-down dairy farm in Vermont as a getaway, something clicked. "I always wanted to be a storyteller," he explains. "I said to Allison one night, 'What if we start a farm and document everything on YouTube? I bet by the time we have stuff to sell, we'll have enough viewers to buy the stuff.'" Five years later, Gold Shaw Farm was "more of a farm startup than an honest-to-goodness farm," but his YouTube channel had 700,000 subscribers and 200 million views. The modern work landscape requires us to think in 360 degrees, managing a portfolio of activities that collectively provide income, meaning, and future possibilities. Morgan juggles three distinct roles: "I'm good at the storytelling; I'm less good at the farming. The day job makes the other two possible." This complexity isn't a bug in today's work life—it's a feature. By embracing multiple dimensions of work rather than seeking fulfillment from a single source, we create more resilient and personally meaningful careers that can adapt to changing circumstances and evolving passions.

Chapter 6: Writing Your Own Success Story: From Survival to Significance

Chris Donovan grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Weston, Massachusetts. His father never made much money; his mother became ill with encephalitis when Chris was six. "They always instilled in us that you go out and get a good, stable job. The happiness quotient was never part of it." Following this script, Chris spent a decade working as a waiter and bartender before joining the telephone company at twenty-nine as an operator. For twenty-five years, Chris stayed at the company, working as a home repairman, computer installer, and pole climber. He volunteered at a suicide hotline and earned a bachelor's degree in religious studies. All along, he nurtured a secret passion that began in high school: "When I was in humanities class, a girl walked in wearing sky-high platforms. I couldn't believe she could walk in them. They were like a piece of art." Chris began sketching women's shoes on notebooks, envelopes, and napkins—a habit he maintained for thirty-five years. At fifty-five, after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and encouraged by his husband, Chris took a two-day shoe design course in Manhattan. The instructor, impressed with his work, encouraged him to pursue a master's degree in Italy. Despite initial setbacks—including having his visa rejected because he was "too old"—Chris eventually enrolled in Polimoda, a fashion design school in Florence. When he struggled initially, his teacher offered pivotal advice: "See all your classmates, those fashion vixens who worked at Saatchi? You're not them. Who were you before you came here?" "A telephone repairman." "Great. Be that." This insight transformed Chris's approach. He began designing shoes with fiber-optic cable, blocks of wood salvaged from construction sites, and glass insulators from old telephone poles. "You can spot a Versace. You can spot a Gucci. I want you to be able to spot a Donovan." He graduated at the top of his class and returned home to launch Chris Donovan Footwear, featuring three collections and twenty different styles. Chris's journey exemplifies how success stories are being rewritten across America. The traditional narrative—with its linear progression, external validation, and narrow definition of achievement—is giving way to more authentic, self-authored stories. "No matter what happens, I've succeeded," Chris reflects. "Because, my God, I chased my freaking dream. I quit my job. I went to Italy. I started my own company. I'm just a success, I am." His story reminds us that the most powerful narrative isn't the one society hands us—it's the one we write ourselves, drawing on our unique experiences, values, and aspirations.

Summary

Throughout these stories, we witness a profound transformation in how people approach work and define success. Brijette Peña rejected traditional career expectations to create a thriving seed company. Troy Taylor abandoned corporate prestige to preserve cultural heritage. Cathy Heying recognized her moment to address a community need despite having no automotive background. Isiah Warner overcame systemic barriers to mentor the next generation of scientists. Morgan Gold crafted a multi-dimensional career combining corporate work, farming, and content creation. Chris Donovan pursued his passion after decades of stability, turning his telephone repairman background into a design advantage. These narratives reveal the emerging truth about work in today's world: success isn't about following a predetermined path but authoring your own story. It requires understanding your personal history, recognizing your unique timing, embracing multiple dimensions of work, and defining achievement on your own terms. As we navigate an increasingly complex landscape of careers, gigs, and purpose-driven pursuits, our greatest asset isn't a perfect résumé or linear progression—it's our ability to craft a narrative that connects our past experiences with our present values and future aspirations. In this meaning-based economy, the most successful people aren't those who follow the old rules, but those who write new ones that honor their authentic selves.

About Author

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Bruce Feiler

BRUCE FEILER is one of America’s most popular voices on contemporary life. He is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestsellers; the presenter of two prime-time series on PBS; and the inspiration for the drama COUNCIL OF DADS on NBC. Bruce’s two TED Talks have been viewed more than two million times. Employing a firsthand approach to his work, Bruce is known for living the experiences he writes about. His work combines timeless wisdom with timely knowledge turned into practical, positive messages that allow people to live with more meaning, passion, and joy. His new book, LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS: Mastering Change at Any Age, describes his journey across America, collecting hundreds of life stories, exploring how we can navigate the growing number of life transitions with greater purpose and skill. For more than a decade, Bruce has explored the intersection of families, relationships, health, and happiness. His book THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES collects best practices from some of the country’s most creative minds. The book was featured on World News, GMA, and TODAY and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Parade. THE COUNCIL OF DADS describes how, faced with one of life’s greatest challenges, he asked six friends to support his young daughters. The book was profiled in PEOPLE, USA Today, and Time and was the subject of a CNN documentary hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta.Since 2001, Bruce has been one of the country’s preeminent thinkers about the role of spirituality in contemporary life. WALKING THE BIBLE describes his 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of Moses through the desert. (“An instant classic,” Washington Post). The book spent a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into fifteen languages.ABRAHAM recounts his search for the shared ancestor of the monotheistic religions. (“Exquisitely written,” Boston Globe). WHERE GOD WAS BORN describes his trek visiting biblical sites throughout Israel, Iraq, and Iran. (“Bruce Feiler is a real-life Indiana Jones,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution). AMERICA’S PROPHET is the groundbreaking story of the influence of Moses on American history. THE FIRST LOVE STORY is a journey across four continents exploring how Adam and Eve shaped our deepest feelings about relationships. (“A miraculous thing—the literary equivalent of breathing new life into a figure of clay,” New York Times Book Review; “Feiler’s best work yet,” Publishers Weekly).A native of Savannah, Georgia, Bruce lives in Brooklyn with wife, Linda Rottenberg, and their identical twin daughters.

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