In the Lurch, by Philip Higgins

[Ulysses]

In the Lurch
By Philip Higgins
Published by the author, 2025

It’s a simple story, and one so very familiar to me—and to any gay man who has adopted a child in the past thirty years.

It’s the story about a teenage girl, Brittany, who gets pregnant by accident, and has to make a decision about what to do. It’s also the story about Richard, a thirty-something gay man who has wanted to be a father since he was a little boy.

But, as the title suggests, both Brittany and Richard are left in the lurch, and their parallel journeys are simultaneously heartbreaking and humorous. Phillip Higgins (whose first book I read and enjoyed quite a long time ago) is a deeply humane writer, exposing his characters’ deepest pain in order to let the reader understand how much they are loved. This is not a romantic book, although there is a love story at its center. Both Brittany and Richard are fairly easy to love—although they don’t feel loved sometimes, because people are not easy and life is not easy.

I bought this book—first because I knew the author’s work—but also because I thought I knew what the book was all about. I was wrong, and the adventures of its two protagonists took me to emotional places I’d never been.