Synopses & Reviews
A gay couple's quest to adopt their foster kids in the early 2000s becomes a spiral of legal, political, and personal challenges.
In his candid and emotional memoir, Lane Igoudin shows the human side of public adoption as he and his partner Jonathan seek to adopt their foster daughters from the Los Angeles County child welfare system. Desperately wanting to be fathers, they enter into a complicated legal process that soon becomes a tangle of drama-filled birth parent visits and children's court hearings. Lane and Jon spend years not knowing whether they will be able to officially adopt the girls, or if the county will reunite the sisters with their birth mother, Jenna, a teenager in the state's custody herself.
The stress of the foster-to-adopt process, compounded with the mounting, nationwide struggle for LGBTQ+ equality, erodes the sense of peace in Lane and Jon's home. Still, the girls attach themselves deeply to their adoptive parents, while their dads do all they can to give them the best lives possible. Heartwarming moments with the kids and relatable first-time-parent woes become bittersweet as Lane realizes how much he and Jon have built — and how much they could lose. A Family, Maybe is a moving story about dedication, heartache, and love.
Review
“Lane and Jon's story brings attention to the still existing barriers to supporting children in need of a loving home. It helps to guide and comfort future parents through the challenging foster and adoption processes and shines a bright light on why we fight. I hope everyone who cares about justice and fairness reads this important memoir. It's a story of hope and perseverance.” Alan Lowenthal, US Congressman
Review
“Lane Igoudin's A Family, Maybe, is an important addition to the adoption-memoir canon. With great compassion and masterful storytelling, Lane recounts his struggle to create a family amid crushing, often mind-boggling bureaucracy of the foster system, ever complicated by the birth parents' heartbreaking and earnest attempts at reunification. However murky the fates of their parenthood seemed sometimes, the unbridled, steadfast love Lane and his partner bestowed on their girls can serve as a clear beacon for all of us.” Vanessa McGrady, author of the critically acclaimed Rock Needs River: A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption
Review
“A Family, Maybe is an honest and inviting first-hand account of one father's journey toward adoption…Written with clarity, honesty, and love, Lane's memoir captures the longing for children that any parent or would-be parent can relate to. Keep this book by your bedside table. It will build your resilience and give you hope!” Dasee Berkowitz, parent educator and author of Becoming a Soulful Parent: A Path to the Wisdom Within
About the Author
Lane Igoudin is a writer, activist, and professor of English and linguistics at Los Angeles City College. He has written extensively on adoption and parenting, and his work has been featured on Adoption.com, FamilyEquality.org, Bay Windows, The Forward, Lambda Literary Review, and Parabola Magazine. As a sociolinguist, he has published book chapters with major academic presses, and was a recent Andrew W. Mellon fellow with the Humanities Division of UCLA.