Michael Dorris

Age: 52

Summary: prolific novelist, essayist, critic and educator whose breakthrough memoir The Broken Cord brought fetal alcohol syndrome to national attention, in which the book about FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) and its effects on Dorris's son won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award, but who had often collaborated with his wife, writer Louise Erdrich, and whose other works included A Yellow Raft on Blue Water.

Cause of Death: Suicide by massive drug overdose

Born: January 30, 1945

Died: April 10, 1997

Location: Concord, Massachusetts