In 1919 in Omaha Nebraska on the fictional street of
Clandish, a young Caucasian woman was raped by a man
of African-American origins. In retaliation, a race riot
took place where numerous characters were caught up in
its aftereffects. What had happened to lead up to the
race riot? KINGS OF BROKEN THINGS by Theodore Wheeler
attempts to lead the readers to what happened using
multiple characters to tell their story as well as how
they saw things from their perspective.
Reading THE KINGS OF BROKEN THINGS by Theodore Wheeler
from cover to cover, I can tell that a whole lot of
research went inside the story because Theodore Wheeler
not only paints the characters with a paintbrush, but he
carefully attempts to include the scenery, the background
and also attempts to make characters as fascinating as he
can. The recreation of 1918 and 1919 is spectacular and
very vivid; my favorite parts included how corruption ran
the town as well as the street; I also enjoyed the thin
line that was drawn between being kindness and
manipulation.
Having said that, I felt that the story had a little too
much going on and it was difficult for me to find a focus
on particular events or to try to tie them together like
a present, which might frustrate readers who are seeking
well-defined reads. I also was trying to understand how
all these disparate characters connect with one another
besides just knowing each other.
For a reader that is seeking a lesson on how corruption
works as well as history of Omaha , Nebraska post World
War I as well as for a fascinating and panoramic read,
KINGS OF BROKEN THINGS by Theodore Wheeler is a novel
that should satisfy those needs.
With characters depicted in precise detail and wide
panorama—a kept-woman’s parlor, a contentious interracial
baseball game on the Fourth of July, and the tragic true
events of the Omaha Race Riot of 1919—Kings of Broken
Things reveals the folly of human nature in an era of
astonishing ambition.
During the waning days of World War I, three lost souls find
themselves adrift in Omaha, Nebraska, at a time of
unprecedented nationalism, xenophobia, and political
corruption. Adolescent European refugee Karel Miihlstein’s
life is transformed after neighborhood boys discover his
prodigious natural talent for baseball. Jake Strauss, a
young man with a violent past and desperate for a second
chance, is drawn into a criminal underworld. Evie Chambers,
a kept woman, is trying to make ends meet and looking every
which way to escape her cheerless existence.
As wounded soldiers return from the front and black migrant
workers move north in search of economic opportunity, the
immigrant wards of Omaha become a tinderbox of racial
resentment stoked by unscrupulous politicians. Punctuated by
an unspeakable act of mob violence, the fates of Karel,
Jake, and Evie will become inexorably entangled with the
schemes of a ruthless political boss whose will to power
knows no bounds.
Written in the tradition of Don DeLillo and Colum McCann,
with a great debt to Ralph Ellison, Theodore Wheeler’s debut
novel Kings of Broken Things is a panoramic view of a
city on the brink of implosion during the course of this
summer of strife.
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