Dorris, a contemporary author of anthropological studies, poetry and short stories, best known for his work in prose. Perhaps his interest and later achievement of a Masters of Philosophy in anthropology from Yale, in 1970 came from his unique genealogic tree, Irish and French on his mother's side, and Modoc Indian on his father's. Though born in Louisville, Kentucky on January 30, 1945, his family relocated to Passau, Germany where his father became a stationed army lieutenant. Soon after, in a tragic jeep accident, his father passed away and the family moved back to Louisville. After his father's death, Michael was raised an only child in a loving household by "two grandmothers, three aunts, and a mother, all of whom were very strong women- (Chavkin 217). Perhaps these women's strength inspired the novel A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Though the family was destitute, hard work allowed him to go to college after obtaining a scholarship from Georgetown University. "For me, going to college was the most wonderful thing imaginable I always liked to read, and at last I was surrounded by other people who read in a place where people were expected to read I was the first person ever on either side of my family to go to college. I went on a scholarship. We were literally poor. We existed on my father's pension. So I worked very hard. I wouldn't have dreamed of taking a year off to find' myself or even missing a class- (Chavkin 91). This hard work paid off in 1967 as he graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelors of Arts in English and the classics. After a year in the graduate program at the Department of History of the Theater at Yale University, he changed his focus to anthropology. Upon the completion of college, he received an assistant professor position at the University of Redlands in California in 1970 and at Franconia College in New Hampshire in 1971-1972, eventually becoming Dartmouth bound in 1972.