Kings of Broken Things

Book excerpt: "During the waning days of World War I, three lost souls find themselves adrift in Omaha, Nebraska, at a time of unprecendented 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 thinderbox 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."--Page 4 of cover.