SOURCE: "Alcohol's Child: A Father Tells His Tale," in The New York Times Book Review, July 30, 1989, pp. 1, 20.

[In the following review, Guthrie asserts that "the alarming statistics and consequences of fetal alcohol syndrome are skillfully interwoven with the human story of one of its victims in The Broken Cord.]

In 1971, Michael Dorris, 26 years old and unmarried, was living in an isolated Indian community in Alaska, doing fieldwork for his doctorate in anthropology. Realizing that "in a world of 'we,' I was an 'I'" he decided that he wanted to be a father. Lacking a partner, Mr. Dorris decided to try to adopt a child alone. Part American Indian himself, he asked for an Indian child, and his application was forwarded to a national adoption service. A few months later, as he was settling into a new teaching job in New Hampshire, a social worker called to tell...