NEW YORK - Michael Dorris, author of a prize-winning book on raising a brain-damaged son, was under criminal investigation for child sex abuse before his suicide last week, friends said yesterday. Minneapolis police confirmed he was the subject of an investigation.
Friends said, the allegations stemmed from bitter divorce proceedings between him and this wife, novelist Louise Erdrich. Dorris was the author of The Broken Cord, which won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award for its account of raising an adopted Indian boy damaged by foetal alcohol syndrome.