M Native American author of Modoc ancestry. He was born in Kentucky in 1945. Raised largely by his aunts and his grandmother, he spent most of his early years in Louisville, although some of his childhood was spent on a reservation in eastern Montana. His Native American ancestry has been an important part of both his fiction and his nonfiction. His first novel, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (1987), concerns three generations of Native American women living on a reservation in Montana. Each woman gives her own first-person account of her life, each interweaving into the next. Dorris’ own experiences growing up in a largely female household and his reservation experiences form part of the background of this novel, as does the oral tradition of Native American literature. His award-winning non-fiction book, The Broken Cord: A Family‘s Ongoing Struggle With Fetal Alcohol...