You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Mike Sulfroblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today on the show, I'm talking with Michael Doris,

whose new book The Broken Court has just been published by Harper and Roe.

It's a book about several things,

partially imagination and its limitations,

partially the history of a family and adopted

children, partially the state of Native Americans and alcoholism in America. But primarily it's a

book about a family's ongoing struggle with fetal alcohol syndrome, and that is its subtitle. Thank you for

coming down and joining us, Michael.

It's a pleasure.

As I was reading the book, I was struck, really, by the human tones it achieves. It begins

with an introduction by your wife, Louise Erdrich, who has written Love Medicine, the Beat Queen

tracks, and a wonderful book of poems called Jack Liding. And it ends with a chapter written by

your son, Adam. At what age was that?

Well, it was written over about five years, concluding when he was 20, I guess.

And so the book has the feeling of a multi-voiced family addressing us all.

When you came to write the book, I imagine that there was some struggle about writing

so subjectively about a subject that is largely a patchwork of statistics like fetal alcohol

...