Creighton University will host an author reading and discussion of a new historical novel set in the era of the 1919 race riot in Omaha that included the lynching of Will Brown just outside the burning Douglas County Courthouse.

Novelist Theodore Wheeler, a Creighton alumnus, will present his first novel, “Kings of Broken Things,” on Sept. 5 at 7 p.m. in the Harper Center auditorium.

Wheeler’s talk will be followed by a panel discussion on how fiction can advance the conversation on racial justice and reconciliation and how racial themes in the novel manifest now, according to a Creighton news release.

“Many people thought that things like this only happened in Alabama or Georgia, never Nebraska,” Wheeler said. “Hopefully, people reading ‘Kings’ will consider how these events have affected what came later – why Omaha is set up the way it is geographically, why our schools are divided the way they are and how the events of September 1919 set into motion so much of what our city has become 100 years later.

“This happened in Omaha, too, and we have to face that.”

Wheeler has been working with Creighton’s Kingfisher Institute for the Liberal Arts and Professions and the Omaha Community Council for Racial Justice and Reconciliation on an anniversary and commemoration of Brown’s hanging on Sept. 28, 1919.

“The anniversary and commemoration give the city an occasion, and a responsibility, to be self-reflective about who we’ve been, who we are and who we want to be,” Wheeler said.

The Sept. 5 panelists are:

• Eric Ewing, executive director, Great Plains Black History Museum.

• Heather Fryer, Creighton professor of history.

• Rev. Henry W. Casper, Creighton professor of history and director of its American Studies Program.

• Palma Strand, professor of law in the negotiation and conflict resolution program.

The moderator for the discussion is Lydia Cooper, an associate professor of English at Creighton.

A book signing will follow the discussion, with Wheeler’s novel available for purchase.

Wheeler is co-director of the Omaha Lit Fest and helps run the Dundee Book Company. Find more about him on his website, theodore-wheeler.com.