A FAMILY, MAYBE: Two Dads, Two Babies, and the Court Cases That Brought Us Together makes a #PrideMonth point: happiness takes work; is everywhere you plant it

A FAMILY, MAYBE: Two Dads, Two Babies, and the Court Cases That Brought Us Together
LANE IGOUDIN
Ooligan Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Two gay dads chronicle the formation and formalization of their family. The men made a deeply responsible, generous choice to enter the foster-to-adopt system, thus ensuring they'd be in the toils of bureaucracy the rest of their lives. I expect there are many who quail before this prospect and, if a family is as much of a priority for them as it was for Lane and Jon, go the surrogacy route.

Massive kidos to you, gents, for staying the course. The bureaucracy, the sisters's biomom, the darkening clouds of great-haters' rage at gay men making strides towards having all their rights...all keep the emotional pot merrily boiling away as we read on. That was not, in any way, guaranteed. We know from the start that the family is intact. I think the ups and downs of building that family is nothing short of amazing as a survival story. These two have my mad respect for surviving their ordeal while being solid, loving, involved dads to their two daughters. I don't envy those young womens' future partners because the models for commitment they carry in their minds are going to be very hard for others to reach.

The one thing the whole family can count on is that they will be loved and supported from within, come what may.

A story of the power of commitment and caring that belongs on your shelf/Kindle. It is not some sort of revelation of beautiful writing but it is a tale not to be ignored. I feel energized by hope and happiness after this read.