THE MARRIAGE SABBATICAL

A contemporary, sexy look at what happens when a long-term marriage meets midlife malaise.

THE MARRIAGE SABBATICAL is the story of a couple that discovers that nine months apart may keep them together for a lifetime. But first, they have to rediscover themselves before they can rediscover each other. And break a few rules. Jason and Nicole have been married for 23 years - and they need a break. From the grind of raising kids, from the jobs that have taken over their lives, from their autopilot life in Portland, Oregon, from each other. The timing is now. Their twins are off to Junior Year Abroad programs in separate hemispheres in Sydney and Shanghai. Nicole's freelance job as a retail merchandiser is at an ebb, and an amazing paid work sabbatical Jason earned after two decades of service to his New York-based publishing house looms large on their horizon. Finally, Nicole and Jason have a chance to shed their day-to-day responsibilities and re-invent their lives, to get back to the people they believed themselves to be before jobs and kids and bills and. Can they return to be those fun, easier-going people? Can they be that couple? At a dinner party with their friends, Nicole and Jason learn of the 500-mile rulewhere anything goes when the couple is apart for a distance of at least 500 miles. Nicole and Jason have always played by the rules. It never occurred to her that they could make them up! The idea both excites and terrifies them, but it may be the last solution to rekindle their twin flame and save their marriage. Lian Dolan is a writer and talker. She is the author of Lost and Found in Paris, The Sweeney Sisters, Helen of Pasadena, and Elizabeth the First Wife, and is a regular columnist for Pasadena Magazine. She's written regular columns for O, The Oprah Magazine, Working Mother Magazine and Pasadena Magazine. She is also the co-creator of Satellite Sisters, an online community for women, and for many years was a host of their award-winning and top-rated talk show/podcast of the same name, which she produced with her four sisters. She graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California with a degree in Classics and now lives in Pasadena with her husband and grown sons.