Michael Dorris

The minute he laid eyes on the toddler in a red snow suit, Michael Dorris fell in love. As the little boy played with toy trucks on the floor of a welfare office, he smiled at the tall, dark-haired man who had come to adopt him and said, "Hi, Daddy." Then he went back to his toys. It was a joyous time for Dorris, then a 25-year-old anthropologist and American Indian scholar at a small New England college.

In some ways, the memorials said it all. For writer J. Anthony Lukas, who killed himself on June 5, the massive amphitheater at New York's Ethical Culture Society bulged to capacity with the country's journalistic elite. Writers John Gregory Dunne, David Halberstam, Betty Friedan and Jonathan Yardley were there. So were Joseph Lelyveld, executive editor of the New York Times, and Hendrik Hertzberg, editorial director of the New Yorker.

"It is not enough to say that 'The Broken Cord,' Michael Dorris' new book about Indian alcohol abuse is good. Written like a prayer from the heart of someone strong enough to share his pain, it tells a tale of crimes against Native American children that approach the dimensions of genocide."

Writer Michael Dorris, whose book about raising a brain-damaged child, "The Broken Cord," brought international attention to the problem of fetal alcohol syndrome, has been found dead in a motel room, an apparent suicide, police said Monday. Concord police said Dorris, 52, an author, anthropologist and founder of Dartmouth College's Native American Studies Program, apparently suffocated himself Friday with a plastic bag. An autopsy report is pending.

The three women who move through the pages of "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water," Michael Dorris' spellbinding first novel, are as unlike--and as kindred--as three kinds of fuel in the same fire. Aunt Ida, eldest of the women, is something like coal in her propensity for harboring hidden heat.

In some ways, the memorials said it all. For writer J. Anthony Lukas, who killed himself on June 5, the massive amphitheater at New York's Ethical Culture Society bulged to capacity with the country's journalistic elite. Writers John Gregory Dunne, David Halberstam, Betty Friedan and Jonathan Yardley were there. So were Joseph Lelyveld, executive editor of the New York Times, and Hendrik Hertzberg, editorial director of the New Yorker.

Fiction writers have a natural fascination with ordinary jobs. Holed up alone in our offices, we gaze out windows with the left-out feelings of children kept after school, and fantasize, when our writing stinks, of friendlier ways of making a living.

The word "empowerment" is the kiwi fruit of vocabulary: Overused until we can't appreciate it anymore, even in the appropriate literary dish. And yet empowerment is what much of children's fiction is all about, particularly for the 8-to-12-year-old age group. If an author can serve up the notion of an independent, manageable future with subtlety and grace, the turmoil of being not-quite-grown becomes a bit more tolerable.

Michael Dorris' new novel, "Cloud Chamber," confirms everything I suspected after reading "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water": that he is one of the true masters of voice, of character and of storytelling in contemporary American literature.

The word "empowerment" is the kiwi fruit of vocabulary: Overused until we can't appreciate it anymore, even in the appropriate literary dish. And yet empowerment is what much of children's fiction is all about, particularly for the 8-to-12-year-old age group. If an author can serve up the notion of an independent, manageable future with subtlety and grace, the turmoil of being not-quite-grown becomes a bit more tolerable.

Fiction writers have a natural fascination with ordinary jobs. Holed up alone in our offices, we gaze out windows with the left-out feelings of children kept after school, and fantasize, when our writing stinks, of friendlier ways of making a living.

Writers Amy Tan and Michael Dorris are no strangers to adult readers. And now, they've taken up pens to write children's books. Tan offers "The Moon Lady," based on a chapter from "The Joy Luck Club." Set in a Shanghai countryside during the 1920s, the story chronicles the adventures of a willful 6-year-old girl during the night of the Moon Festival. Ying-ying falls off a boat, is rescued by a fisherman and meets the Moon Lady, who grants her one wish.

I commend your editorial ("The Sorrows of Somalia," Aug. 5). The U.N., as our agent for compassion in the war-torn regions of Europe and the Horn of Africa, cannot allow either/or thinking to stop lifesaving aid from entering Somalia through the Mogadishu airport. Thanks also for the three-part series by Michael Dorris (Commentary, Aug. 3-5) on his experience in Zimbabwe. Save the Children, the organization of which Dorris is a board member, was our host during a similar mission in Ethiopia.

Writers Amy Tan and Michael Dorris are no strangers to adult readers. And now, they've taken up pens to write children's books. Tan offers "The Moon Lady," based on a chapter from "The Joy Luck Club." Set in a Shanghai countryside during the 1920s, the story chronicles the adventures of a willful 6-year-old girl during the night of the Moon Festival. Ying-ying falls off a boat, is rescued by a fisherman and meets the Moon Lady, who grants her one wish.

I commend your editorial ("The Sorrows of Somalia," Aug. 5). The U.N., as our agent for compassion in the war-torn regions of Europe and the Horn of Africa, cannot allow either/or thinking to stop lifesaving aid from entering Somalia through the Mogadishu airport. Thanks also for the three-part series by Michael Dorris (Commentary, Aug. 3-5) on his experience in Zimbabwe. Save the Children, the organization of which Dorris is a board member, was our host during a similar mission in Ethiopia.

To the layman, doing a casual bit of research in a university library, who are all those others ? Those slightly ruffled and abstract people, blending in with the books, who scuttle with such looks of dedication in and out of the stacks deep under the library--a trap that seemingly holds them for hours?

For Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, the discovery of a new world began 10 years ago on a dreary, rain-soaked drive through the plains of North Dakota. Pulling into the little town of Minnewaukan for a break, the two young writers checked out the local library--a basement room--and began thumbing through an old copy of Christopher Columbus' journal that was gathering dust on a table. Like millions of Americans, they had the grade-school rap down cold: In 1492, he sailed the ocean blue.