“We ran off to Venice after we married—didn’t you know that? Of course not—before we had you kids. To make connections and find work. But I became deathly ill. The porter had to carry me out of the hotel because the manager thought I was contagious. I was going to die. But your mother took care of me until I was well again.”
“Herr,” Karel interrupted. “Do you miss her?”
Miihlstein looked confused, like he could cry.
“I don’t understand these words. Of course I do. She was my love. My only love.”
“She left us.”
“Yeah. That’s precisely right. There was only one of her and now she’s gone.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a work of imagination. While many passages are based on historical personalities and events, the scenes depicted are a fictional approximation of what life was like in Omaha during the last years of World War I and how the Omaha Race Riot of 1919 was experienced. In order to serve the story, I altered reality, placed real people in imagined spaces, invented dialogue, and dramatized events. That being said, I tried to stay true to the historical record when possible, particularly as this pertains to the character of real people. Mostly I used primary sources in these cases. Many hours were spent in the microfilm rooms of the Omaha Public Library and Creighton University’s Reinert Library parsing World-Herald, Bee, Daily News, and Monitor archives to ensure that these pages best represent the spirit of the River Ward in all its complexity.
Several books were invaluable while conducting the research that fed the novel. The Underworld Sewer: A Prostitute Reflects on Life in the Trade, 1871–1909, by Josie Washburn, and River City Empire: Tom Dennison’s Omaha, by Orville D. Menard, both from University of Nebraska Press, are vital resources about many of the shadowy figures who lived in Omaha during those years. The German-American Experience, by Don Heinrich Tolzmann, The Gate City: A History of Omaha, by Lawrence H. Larsen and Barbara J. Cottrell, and the WPA-produced Omaha: A Guide to the City and Environs are also great resources. Likewise, this book couldn’t have been possible without the work of local historians, archivists, and preservationists, particularly those at the Durham Museum, Douglas County Historical Society, and Nebraska State Historical Society.
To this day there is controversy and conspiracy about what caused the Omaha Race Riot of 1919 and lynching of Will Brown, and whether these tragic events reveal something significant about the humanity of this city, or if troubled times should be forgotten. This book is an act of remembering.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due to everyone who helped make this book possible, whether through collaboration, support, or other means. Foremost to Cleo Croson (my maternal grandmother) and Billy Wheeler (my paternal grandfather) for stoking my love of storytelling and history by sharing so honestly the stories of their lives. They were born decades after the events depicted here, in towns far away from Omaha, yet their stories keep me thinking about who I am, how families end up where they do, and those who were left behind along the way.
As always, thanks to Nicole, Madeleine, and Clara for bringing light and adventure to my life. To my family, Marta and Dennis, Karen and Bill, Matt, Shannon, and everyone, for their support, love, and humor. To Stephanie Delman for her unfaltering enthusiasm and tenacity in finding the best publisher for this book, and Vivian Lee for her insights and fearlessness as an editor.
To my closest friends and conspirators, Bill Sedlak, Amber Mulholland, Drew Justice, Ryan Borchers, for their patience in developing the early and late drafts of this story into something far more significant than I first imagined it could be. Along these lines, many thanks to Dave Green, Jenn Ladino, Devin Murphy, Doug Rice, Sam Slaughter, Kwakiutl Dreher, Susan Aizenberg, Ngwarsungu Chiwengo, Miles Frieden, Arlo Haskell, Gregory Henry, Julie Iromuanya, Jean-Baptiste Joly, Lee Martin, Mary Morris, Dave Mullins, Timothy Schaffert, Lucas Schwaller, Brent Spencer, Mary Helen Stefaniak, Robert Stone, Travis Thiezsen, and Shannon Youngman.
To the journals and presses who published excerpts from the novel in progress: Edition Solitude (On the River, Down Where They Found Willy Brown), Boulevard (“River Ward, 1917”), Artful Dodge (“The Hyphenates of Jackson County”), and Four Quarters (“In Her Place on Capitol Ave, 1917”).
This book wouldn’t exist without the generous support of amazing arts organizations and the people who run them, like Akademie Schloss Solitude, which for three months put me up on the grounds of a German castle to ponder beingness and the place my art can occupy in the world; Key West Literary Seminar, which thrice brought me to paradise in the dead of winter and challenged me to think big; Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, which gave me space to write during the early days of drafting; and the creative writing program at Creighton University, which was a second home—one I could return to.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Travis Thiezsen
Theodore Wheeler is a reporter who covers civil law and politics in Omaha, where he lives with his wife and their two daughters. His fiction has been featured in Best New American Voices, New Stories from the Midwest, the Southern Review, the Kenyon Review, and Boulevard and received special mention in a Pushcart Prize anthology. A graduate of the MFA program at Creighton University, Wheeler was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany; a resident of the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City; and a winner of the Marianne Russo Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. He is the author of Bad Faith, a collection of short fiction. Kings of Broken Things is his first novel.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CONTENTS
Prologue
THE OPEN CITY Spring 1917
Consider Karel Miihlstein. . . .
Consider Jake Strauss. . . .
Karel’s shoes were . . .
Consider Evie Chambers. . . .
One evening Maria . . .
A BRAND FROM THE BURNING Winter 1918
Karel was sore . . .
After he beat . . .
Consider Tom Dennison: . . .
Maybe it seems . . .
Consider Anna Miihlstein. . . .
Karel and his . . .
THE UNINITIATED Spring 1918
Everyone knew Jake . . .
Josh Joseph died . . .
All the election . . .
Evie didn’t know . . .
Anna had her . . .
RED SUMMER Autumn 1919
Jake had cause . . .
Anna quit asking . . .
It wasn’t so . . .
Something wicked must . . .
Evie had plenty . . .
It was in . . .
Everyone had a . . .
Jake and Evie . . .
It was 2 p.m. . . .
They dragged the . . .
He came down . . .
Epilogue
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kings of Broken Things Page 32
