SOURCE: "Beyond Healing's Reach?," in Times Literary Supplement, August 24-30, 1990, p. 893.

[In the following excerpt, Lomas reviews The Broken Cord.]

Dorris's craving for fatherhood is so intense that he overcomes all obstacles to become the first single man in America to be granted an adoption. He is of mixed blood and the child is a three-year-old American Indian. The fact that the boy is said to be mentally retarded does not dismay him, and from the moment he sets eyes on "Adam" he is besotted—"How often in a four-day period can one person fall in love with another, each time as it is the first?"

Dorris brushes aside all difficulties until Adam has an epileptic fit and becomes gravely ill. But even though, at the time, Dorris is nearly driven mad with worry, he continues to rationalize all subsequent manifestations of illness and defect, seeing them merely...