THE BROKEN CORD: A Family's Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

by Michael Dorris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 1989

Wrenchingly told, the engrossing personal tale of a father struggling with his eldest son's disability from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, intertwined with the results of his professional research into the disorder that informs us on clinical and epidemiological detail. Anthropologist/novelist Dorris (A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, 1987) was single when he sought to adopt a Native American son: ""The year was 1971 and I was twenty-six years old, ex-would-be hippie, candidate for a Yale doctorate in anthropology, a first-year instructor at a small experimental college in New England. . .I wanted a child, I wanted to be a parent."" So in relatively short order, he adopted the three-year-old boy he here calls Adam. Dorris seems to have taken the initial settling-in difficulties in stride; indeed, he comes across as incredibly nurturing, a calm, comfortable, involved parent. But over the years, he repeatedly failed to recognize, or denied, that Adam had severe difficulties. ""I look back now at Adam's report cards, at all those 'Satisfactory's and 'C's' in math and science and history that I had insisted appear, all those passing marks when in truth he didn't grasp for more than a minute any of the material."" As Dorris came to the realization, when Adam was in his teens, that his son had serious physical and mental difficulties, he threw himself deeper and deeper into an investigation of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome--what happens when a mother drinks, even moderately, during pregnancy? Adam had come from a background of severe abuse as well as alcoholism, and the incidence of alcoholism is particularly high among Native American mothers; but the problems resulting from FAS that Adam has can be found everywhere in American society, Dorris points out. Low IQs, learning disabilities, physical impairments such as seizures are the hallmarks of those with FAS, but for Dorris and Adam, the most debilitating effect has been a reasoning disorder that Dorris calls bad judgment. Try to comprehend, Dorris asks us, ""how bad judgment is not a matter of simple intelligence or an indicator of a rotten person, but just inability, absolute inability."" And as he illustrates most effectively by relating Adam's day, the results are devastating. Adding to the impact of Dorris' chronicle is the introduction by his wife, writer Louise Erdrich, and the postscript, a short, heartbreaking autobiography by Adam himself. A compelling, alarming account.

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION