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Anthony Rolo, editor of the Circle, a Native-American newspaper in Minneapolis and a friend of Erdrich's, says the couple's relationship began to founder as Dorris sought the spotlight and worked incessantly even as his depression worsened. Rolo says Dorris sometimes took out his depression on his wife: "I'm surprised [Louise] managed to keep her sense of self-worth and self-identity." Erdrich hoped that by separating from her husband, he would be spurred to seek the help he needed. "When she ended it," Rolo says, "she believed she was doing it for his benefit as well as for hers."

Their troubles with their children no doubt added to the marital burden. Abel died in a car accident in 1991, and their other two adopted children, Jeffrey, now around 25, and Madeline, 21, also struggled with fetal-alcohol problems and eventually became estranged from Dorris and Erdrich. "I don't think I was by any means the best parent my children could have found," Dorris acknowledged last month during a reading in Washington.

In 1995 Erdrich and Dorris pressed attempted-theft charges against Jeffrey, who had been working at odd jobs around the country, and was living in Denver. The charges stemmed from a rambling, five-page letter he wrote from the Denver County Jail, where he was awaiting prosecution on misdemeanor charges of beating his girlfriend. He wrote, "Think about what we put up with as helpless children. You beat us senseless, you terrorized us, you made us walk on eggshells, we feared you, and then Louise comes onto the picture. Instead of stopping his abuse, she kicks in." He blamed his own troubles with the law on having been abused and demanded $15,000 from Erdrich and help publishing a manuscript. "Very simple, people, you owe me!" he wrote. "You owe me a childhood, you owe me a life."

Lisa Wayne, the public defender who represented Jeffrey at the ensuing trials, contends that the letter, as well as letters written by Dorris to his son over the course of 10 years, is evidence that Dorris abused his children. She portrays the charges as an attempt by Dorris "to shut [Jeffrey] up." But according to people close to the couple, Jeffrey so frightened them that they essentially went into hiding, first in Montana, then in Minneapolis, where they moved in 1993 and where Erdrich and Dorris, on leave from Dartmouth, continued their writing. Their location, says a friend, was "a secret that had to be kept because they really believed someone in their lives would find them and hurt them."

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