Quest for Eternal Sunshine is a posthumous collaboration between Mendek Rubin and his daughter, Myra Goodman.

Myra untangled, edited and synthesized hundreds of pages of memoir, philosophy, poetry and affirmations that Mendek had written over two decades. She filled in the blanks of her father’s life story using information she compiled from recorded conversations, artifacts, international research, memories, and interviews with his only surviving sibling, wife, older daughter, extended family.

Myra’s hope is that Mendek’s story, and the lessons he learned throughout his remarkable life, will help others access the peace and joy her father discovered and believed was everyone’s birthright.

Mendek Rubin

 Mendek Rubin was born in Jaworzno, Poland to an Orthodox Jewish family. Both of his parents and four of his five siblings were murdered in Auschwitz, while he survived three years in a Nazi slave labor concentration camp. After the war, Mendek immigrated to the United States, was drafted into the US Army and served in Korea, and then returned to New York City, where he started a very successful jewelry manufacturing business.

By middle age, the successful inventor began devoting himself to solving the riddle of the human mind in an effort to heal his depression and find joy, which continued to elude him despite both financial and marital success. Mendek developed into a philosopher and spiritual seeker, and became a prolific writer and painter who loved music, dance and nature. Mendek lived with his wife in Carmel, California, for the last thirty years of his life, close to both of his daughters and his three grandchildren.  He died in September 2012.

Myra Goodman

Myra Goodman, along with her husband Drew, founded Earthbound Farm on a two-and-a-half acre backyard garden in Carmel Valley, California in 1984. Both were recent college graduates, “city kids” from Manhattan, who became self-taught farmers who intuitively resisted handling agricultural chemicals.

Earthbound Farm was the first company to successfully package pre-washed salads for retail sale in 1986, and they have been credited with popularizing spring mix salads nationwide. The company grew from humble beginnings to become the largest grower of organic produce in the world.

The Goodmans’ biography is included in the American Enterprise exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for their role in bringing organic food to the mainstream. They were inducted into the Social Venture Network Hall of Fame as Environmental Evangelists, and were recognized with the Organic Trade Association’s Organic Leadership Award and Global Green USA’s Corporate Environmental Leadership Award.

Myra is the author of three cookbooks: Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook; The Earthbound Cook: 250 Recipes for Delicious Food and a Healthy Planet; and Straight from the Earth: 100 Irresistible Vegan Recipes for Everyone, written in collaboration with her daughter, Marea. 

Myra graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where she earned a degree in the Political Economy of Industrial Societies. She also has an honorary doctorate from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Myra and Drew have two grown children, and three dogs, Oscar, Henry, and Leo. They still live on their original farm in Carmel Valley.