THE IMPACT AND TRAGEDY OF MICHAEL DORRIS.

Byline: Joseph P. Kahn Boston Globe

``My son will forever travel through a moonless night,'' Michael Dorris wrote in ``The Broken Cord,'' his award-winning book about fetal alcohol syndrome and the devastating effects it had on a young American Indian child whom Dorris, a single father, had adopted.

His son, known to readers as ``Adam,'' as Dorris observed, was ``conceived and grown in an ethanol bath'' and now ``lives each day in the act of drowning. For him there is no shore.''

Thus did Dorris convey, in prose that seized the imagination and tugged at every parent's heart, the tragedy of his son's affliction and the mystery that had once enveloped it. A breakthrough book on many levels, ``The Broken Cord,'' published in 1989, in some ways prefigured an even deeper, fresher mystery - that of Dorris' own death last week in a Concord, N.H., motel room.

The 52-year-old author was an apparent suicide.

News of his death has sent shock waves through literary and academic circles. For in a career capped by the most painful and personal of literary reckonings, Dorris commanded widespread public attention and sympathy. Of mixed Irish, French, and American Indian ancestry, he most importantly championed and wrote passionately about American Indian history and legend in addition to more contemporary tribal issues.

Dorris and his work made a difference, a literal difference, that few authors can claim. Proceeds from it have helped support research into fetal alcohol syndrome and its treatment; Congress responded to Dorris' book by convening hearings on FAS. A Yale-trained anthropologist, Dorris founded the department of Native American studies at Dartmouth College, where he began teaching in 1970. He wrote children's books (``Morning Girl,'' ``Guests'') that were commercially successful and critically applauded. Dorris' oeuvre includes a short-story collection and two novels of recent vintage, most notably ``A Yellow Raft in Blue Water.''

Married since 1981 to author Louise Erdrich (from whom Dorris was separated at the time of his death), he further comprised one half of one of the country's most profiled literary couples. It was Erdrich whose stalled career Dorris helped jump-start by becoming her ``agent''; savvily, he printed up official-looking stationery and touted her talents to New York editors who had somehow missed what was obvious to Dorris. The two writers became unusually close collaborators. Together they produced a novel (``The Crown of Columbus'') that was perhaps more noteworthy for its $1.5 million advance than its art.

Of Erdrich, whose novels include ``Love Medicine'' and ``The Beet Queen,'' Dorris once said that ``both of us felt responsible for and protective of whatever book, article, poem, review, or story was published, regardless of who got the cover byline.''

Said Erdrich in a 1991 interview with the Globe, ``It is always different, every story. We are still figuring out how to do it.''

Alan Lelchuk, a novelist and writing teacher at Dartmouth, eulogized Dorris as ``a complicated man who wore a lot of hats'' personally and professionally.

``He was a teacher who tried to open Dartmouth, a conservative college, to a more liberal standard,'' said Lelchuk, who praised ``The Broken Cord'' as a ``gutsy and brave book'' that stands in sharp contrast to many current memoirs. ``It was less a kiss-and-tell book than a hard and true telling of a very difficult story,'' said Lelchuk. ``You didn't feel Michael's motive was self-aggrandizing or commercial, like many today, but a coming to terms with something truly difficult.''

Sometimes, Lelchuk said, ``it's hard to match in fiction the truth in your life. Michael was a case in point.''

C. Michael Curtis, a senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly, recently edited an Erdrich story for publication and said he particularly admired not only ``The Broken Cord'' but Dorris' real-life struggles with his adopted children. There were three in all, Curtis noteMd, and each led a difficult, troubled life. Abel, the son profiled in ``Broken Cord,'' died in 1991 in a car accident. He was 23.

``I was impressed and surprised at how hard Michael and Louise worked together,'' said Curtis, ``and I admired him in taking on these children.'' Their struggles, Curtis added, were ``deeply painful'' for Dorris and Erdrich, who also had three biological children. ``I felt especially for Michael, though,'' said Curtis. ``This news is very sad.''

Dorris was said to be working on a follow-up to ``The Broken Cord'' that was scheduled for publication next year. Last week the waters closed over him instead, leaving no shore to swim toward and many mysteries for us to ponder.

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Photo: Award-winning 52-year-old author Michael Dorris was found dead recently.