Book Launch: A Family, Maybe by Lane Igoudin at Book Soup (LA)

A Father’s Day / Pride Month Reading: Author, activist, and a proud Dad, Lane Igoudin will be in conversation with the veteran Los Angeles Times reporter Stacy Perman about his rollercoaster journey adopting kids from the LA County foster system.

In his candid and emotional memoir, A Family, Maybe (Ooligan Press, PSU, 2024), 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. (Ooligan Press).

Lane Igoudin, Ph.D., author of A Family, Maybe, has written on foster adoption, parenting, and other topics for Adoption.com, FamilyEquality.org, Forward, LGBTQ Nation, and Parabola, and spoken about his book on NBC’s “Daytime” show as well as a variety of radio shows and literary and parenting podcasts. Lane is professor of English and linguistics at Los Angeles City College and a recent Andrew W. Mellon Fellow with UCLA Humanities.

Stacy Perman is an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. The recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, Stacy is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Times. Her work has appeared in Business Week, Time, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.