STAY TUNED

An Iowa farm foreclosure, abandoned children, a fleabag SRO hotel in New York City, small-town anti-Semitism, the death of a parentyes, all these elements can coexist in one novel, albeit unsuccessfully. Stevie's father takes her from their farm to New York after her mother dies. He's looking for work, and finds itin Alaska. Stevie can't go along, so her father hastily arranges for her to live with his estranged brother in New Hampshire. At Penn Station, someone steals her ticket and moneyand also her uncle's address. Fortunately, streetwise Eddie and his little sister are with her; they were in the next room at the hotel, and she is newly devoted to them. There is more good fortune ahead: all three are temporarily adopted, first by a teenage would-be boat builder and later by a kindly librarian. Nothing adds up in this story of coincidences, overloaded plotting, and shifting points of view (Stevie's is dropped early on, and Eddie's takes the story to its close). Far-fetched, and ultimately pointless. (Fiction. 8-12)