A Family, Maybe by Lane Igoudin

A Family, Maybe“An inspiring portrait of steadfast love under pressure.”
–Janet Fitch, White Oleander, an Oprah’s Book Club selection

Public adoption is a long and uncertain process with some of society’s most vulnerable people at the heart of it. Every adult and child involved in the system has a unique story to tell. In his candid and poignant memoir, A Family, Maybe (Ooligan Press, February 13, 2024, ISBN: 9781947845459), Lane Igoudin details his and his husband Jonathan’s fraught path through the Los Angeles County’s foster-to-adopt process. A Family, Maybe offers an unprecedented look into the adoption process as it affects the lives of everyone involved, from the children taken into the system, to the suffering birth parents, to the couples hoping desperately to start a family of their own.

In the fall of 2005, after years of preparation, planning, and waiting for a chance to raise a family, Jon and Lane were given the opportunity to foster an infant named Marianna. Lane and Jon fell in love with the child and decided they would give her the best life they could. Marianna’s mother, a teenager in foster care herself, had voluntarily placed her in foster care before going AWOL. With her birth mother absent and father unknown, Marianna seemed to be on the fast-track to becoming adoptable.

The couple could not have predicted the return of the child’s mother, still in foster care, and the news that she was expecting a second child. With the second child also came the sudden appearance of the baby’s birth father, a man 10 years older than the mother, which would complicate the kids’ cases and begin to pull Lane and Jon’s family apart.

A Family, Maybe documents the ensuing spiral, rife with legal challenges, emotional blows, and no less important, political strife. In the early 2000s, with gay marriage and adoption still illegal in most U.S. states, Lane and Jon’s family would join the first wave of out LGBTQ+ families fighting for respect and equality.

A Family, Maybe is a story of hope and heartbreak; of relatable first-time parenting highs and lows, but also with the pressure of knowing the family you’ve built could be ripped from you at any moment.

“Helps to guide and comfort future parents through the challenging foster and adoption processes . . . a story of hope and perseverance.”
—U.S. Congressman Alan Lowenthal

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lane Igoudin, Ph.D., is a writer, blogger, and professor of English and linguistics at Los Angeles City College. He has written extensively on foster adoption, parenting, LGBTQ families, and spiritual growth for publications such as Adoption.com, FamilyEquality.org, The Forward, and Lambda Literary Review. He recently served as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow with the Humanities Division of UCLA.

The Genius of Home by Catherine Read, Ph.D.

In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the number of parents choosing to teach their children at home rather than sending them to school. Many parents find that public schools cannot offer their children the individualized support they need, and private schools can be an intense expense. 

In The Genius of Home (Bell Pond Books, November 2021, 978-1952166099, original trade paperback), Dr. Catherine Read describes her experiences following her decision to school her children at home and to follow the curriculum used in Steiner-Waldorf schools. Read is a pioneer of this method, among the first ever to document her journey and her success. To some, using the Waldorf curriculum at home may be a contradiction, but The Genius of Home provides both an informative base for why this method works, as well as instructional guides for those considering homeschooling. 

Catherine Read shares her journey as the primary teacher of her two daughters through the entire Waldorf curriculum – from early childhood through high school. She outlines what she did, when she did it and why. In this inspiring account, Read reveals the flexible, artistic, challenging and ultimately rewarding nature of this unique approach to education. There are many approaches to homeschooling, but Read and her children found their success through the guidance and insight of Rudolph Steiner using the Waldorf method. Both of Read’s daughters have gone on to pursue higher education, with one graduating in veterinary medicine at Cornell and the other receiving her Master’s in Art Therapy at Long Island University. With Read’s book as a guide, parents can help prepare their children for further education in a thoughtful, balanced way. She emphasizes a balance between observation and critical thought, sleep schedules and biological rhythms, and between intellectual work and time in nature.

“To educate means to draw forth (Latin, educare: to lead, to bring up); the teacher must draw forth, but, also, must meet the new individual at their own level. But what does the teacher draw forth from the child?”

The Genius of Home, by Catherine Read, includes detailed instructions on classroom materials and setup, sample lesson plans, curriculum adaptations, and day-by-day examples of how the author adopted the Steiner-Waldorf curriculum into her home. Explore how rhythm, creativity, and nature come together to give a comprehensive education from kindergarten to high school graduation. Part memoir and part how-to, the account from Read’s years as both a parent and teacher will be an encouraging and instructional companion to anyone thinking of engaging in their own school-at-home.

 

Uncontrollable by Sara Staggs

Epilepsy, seizures, brain surgery—these are not the everyday problems of everyday people. For Casey Scott, a high-powered civil rights attorney in Portland, Oregon, they are a part of her life. Like many smart and super capable women, she is determined to manage her demanding boss, two kids, a husband—also with a big career—and her health conditions, until one day she can’t. Finally, up against a wall where sudden death from a seizure is a real possibility, Casey must make a heart-breaking decision that will alter everything she had carefully planned for her successful life.

Based on her real-life struggles with epilepsy, UNCONTROLLABLE (Black Rose Writing, 978-1-68513-201-9, $22.95, May 23, 2023) is a debut novel by Sara Staggs. It is the story of 

Casey and Jonah Scott, a power couple, who fell in love and married expecting to conquer the world. But when Casey’s seizures start occurring more frequently Jonah insists that they need to get serious medical help and make extreme changes to her career plans. 

An extensive hospital stay and painful testing takes Casey halfway across the country, while Jonah tries to handle his own failing aspirations at work and with the kids. Meanwhile, Casey is determined to return to work on a prominent civil rights case, after brain surgery. The strain on their marriage has unexpected consequences and Jonah and Casey will have to find even more strength and courage to save Casey and their family.

Sara Staggs was a civil litigator in Portland, Oregon. Two brain surgeries were successful at limiting the severity of her seizures, which can now be controlled with medication and proper self-care. She had to close her law practice and bid farewell to that chapter of her life for good. For Sara, writing is the next frontier. She has contributed to several publications including: Huffington Post, Flash Fiction Magazine, In Parentheses Literary Journal, Five Minute Lit, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal literary journals. She also has several other projects in the pipeline.

UNCONTROLLABLE is an inspirational story of a woman whose life is derailed by something out of her control, and how she chooses to face life on its terms, abandoning what she once dreamed she could be. 

SARA STAGGS was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. She practiced civil rights litigation for several years before turning to writing. Her debut novel, Uncontrollable, is based on her experiences with epilepsy, and has been called “a compelling story that tackles complex themes with sensitivity and nuance” by Pacific Book Review and is a Five-Star Readers’ Favorite.

She loves to write fiction, both adult contemporary and YA. Sara is an epilepsy advocate and an LGBTQ+ advocate. She writes a blog that covers epilepsy, LGBTQ+ concerns, writing and publishing tips. She has appeared on television and podcasts to talk about epilepsy and works to dispel the stigma that surrounds the condition. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and, when she’s not writing, can be found reading, hiking, mountain biking, or camping with her husband and two children. 

 

Find her online at www.sarastaggswrites.com

The Apprentice of Buchenwald by Oren Schneider

In 1943, when Alex Rosenberg was a teenager, he left his life of privilege and his identity behind when his family lost everything during the War. He was thrust into a reality of hiding and horrors, for which nothing could have prepared him.  However, his selfless acts and a determination to survive saved his father, and the lives of Allies on the battlefield.  Alex’s story is now immortalized in a new book The Apprentice of Buchenwald (Amsterdam Publishers; January 27, 2023; Hardcover; $23.95) by his grandson, Oren Schneider.

Using their last reserves of wealth and influence to escape extermination, the Rosenbergs fled their hometown and went underground to avoid the Gestapo. Eventually exposed, captured, and taken to Buchenwald, the largest concentration camp in Germany, Alex and his father collaborated to survive one day at a time.

A chaotic chain of events put Alex, an entrepreneurial trader’s son with the hands of a gifted mechanic, now a forced laborer, at the heart of a massive armament sabotage scheme. When his father is gravely injured and disappears after an air bombing, it is up to industrious Alex to create leverage and use wartime machinations and raw talent to save his father’s life.

Oren Schneider spent a lifetime documenting his grandfather’s story, and complemented it with genealogical information researched with the help of www.myhertiage.com to write The Apprentice of Buchenwald.  His photos, audio recordings, and transcripts made it possible to recreate Alex’s story; a young man who rose to the occasion to fight back and leave a footprint on the history of World War II and The Holocaust.

About the Author

Oren Schneider was born in Israel, a third generation to holocaust survivors and seventh generation to farmers from the Galilee.  He is an entrepreneur and business owner who enjoys music, cooking, travel, people and especially the combination of all four. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

The Apprentice of Buchenwald:
The True Story of the Teenage Boy Who Sabotaged Hitler’s War Machine
By Oren Schneider
Amsterdam Publishers
Publication Date: January 27, 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-9493276536
Page Count: 232
Author Website: www.ApprenticeOfBuchenwald.com

Hamlet’s Mirror by Elma Linz Kanefield with Dianne Conjeaud

Cover image for Hamlet's MirrorAt her audition, a young woman walked on stage and prepared herself to sing, but when she opened her mouth there was no sound.

This story sounds like a nightmare, but for Elma Linz Kanefield it was very real and life changing.  She wanted to understand how and why this “stage fright” happens and what makes some performers succeed while others struggle.

Elma’s trauma inspired her to become one of the world’s only specialists in the psychology of the performing artist. This September, she will share how she empowers performers and restores their mental health in her new book Hamlet’s Mirror: Reaching Your Performance Potential Onstage and Off (September 2022, Original Trade Paperback, $15.99).

Elma defines Performance Potential as “being the best you can be and doing the best you can do based on what you know in the moment of performance.”   This is an internal state when you are emotionally and mentally able to balance the challenges, fears, and insecurities that can come with entertaining others.

In Hamlet’s Mirror, Elma explores the performer’s culture:  its challenges, the highs and the lows.  Then she delves into the four performing personality profiles she identified in her work:

  1. Problem-Ridden Performer
  2. Pugnacious Performer
  3. Promising Performer
  4. Potential-Realized Performer

Each section of the book is accompanied by fictionalized anecdotes of real performers who worked with Elma throughout four decades of having a New York City psychotherapy practice exclusive to performing artists.  Also included are questions and reflections for readers who will have an opportunity to identify what kind of performer they are.  Finally, Elma reveals how to reach your performance potential and adds examples to support her points.

Hamlet’s Mirror is for anyone considering a life in the performing arts from young people preparing to enter the “real world” of professional artists to seasoned performers who feel they are not realizing their performance potential.

Hamlet’s Mirror
by Elma Linz Kanefield, LCSW with Dianne Conjeaud
Publication Date: Sep 15, 2022
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9862605-0-1
Price: $15.99
Page count: 212