SOURCE: "Ideals of Community," in Times Literary Supplement, May 16, 1997, p. 22.

[In the following mixed review, Bradfield finds that Cloud Chamber "succeeds as a haunting reflection of Michael Dorris's humanitarian concerns; but as a compelling story about believable people, it does not."]

Both in his work and in his life, Michael Dorris sought to establish whole families out of broken parts. He was one of the first single men in America to raise an adopted child. He consistently gave voice to the reservation-bound Indian culture that produced him. And in his award-winning book, The Broken Cord, he called public attention to the difficulties of bringing up a child with foetal alcohol syndrome, a pattern of addiction and abuse which can destroy a family long before it ever gets started. In everything he wrote, he was concerned with the ways people reach out to each other to make an intimate...