The Broadcast Mandate: Bloodlines

This first novel by a television news anchor in Kentucky is set in the early 1980s, and the fictional WBMA-TV, long the ratings leader in Mobile, Ala., is in trouble. Oliver and Helen Batheson select Eugene ``Stump'' Henry to be the station's savior. A Mobile native returning home after years away, Henry is obsessive, brilliant and self-destructive. He is also an alcoholic, casual drug user, wife abuser and workaholic who has a specially built desk at which he can stand up. As if that weren't enough, he's (unknown to him) the illegitimate son of Helen, the manipulative queen of old-money Mobile society, and C. B. Peoples, the racist good ol' boy who runs WBMA and who bitterly opposes Henry's attempts to modernize the station. Unfortunately, Schroeder seems unable to make good use of the host of attributes he has given Henry, whose character never develops, despite the many events that involve him, from having his apartment ransacked to learning who his progenitors are. Henry's stasis amid manic self-destructive energy make for a long soap opera rather than a novel. (Jan.)