SOURCE: "Michael Dorris Explores the Power of Family," in Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1997, p. 6.

[In the review of Cloud Chamber below, Scofield comments on Dorris's vision of community.]

Readers who remember the quiet power of Michael Dorris' novel, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, will be delighted with this related but nonsequential follow-up [Cloud Chamber]. Dorris has gone back in time to trace the paternal family of one of the earlier characters, the half-Indian, half-black Rayona. The result is a story of five generations, beginning in beautiful, strife-torn West Ireland. It is a thoroughly absorbing novel remarkable for its lyricism, compassion, humor and thumping good story, all characteristics one has come to expect of the author's work. To my mind, Cloud Chamber is his best yet.

The novel is constructed in a fashion familiar to fans of Dorris and of his wife, Louise Erdrich. They have repeatedly explained that...