Rolling Thunder: A Novel

by William Simmons

This is the picaresque tale of Dennis Oldham, who is the straight man, reading the news and bantering with the star on Manhattan's hippest rock music radio show. The star is Roberto Velez, who wows the women, gives studio executives gray hair, but is tolerated because his sprightly and irreverent program pulls a morning audience of well over a million New Yorkers out of bed every day. For poor Dennis, however, his troubles never seem to his estranged wife is trying to gain full custody of his much-loved young daughter, he can never find Velez when he needs him, it looks as if the station that airs their show is about to pass into new and unfriendly hands, and his courtship of a pretty young intern is going nowhere.

268 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1999