Will I love The Nickel Boys?

The devastating story of two boys unjustly sentenced to serve time in a nightmarish juvenile reform school, The Nickel Boys won a Pulitzer Prize and became a New York Times bestseller.

It is a must-read for anyone sampling literary works featuring Florida. The boys in the story, Elwood and Turner, endure and witness hellish abuse at the Nickel Academy. The boys’ haunting story, exquisitely told by Colson Whitehead, is based on Florida’s real-life Dozier school where thousands of children were tortured, raped, and murdered for more than a century.

Whitehead’s unflinching descriptions of terror and abuse can be tough to… show more.

An unflinching and raw look at the early twentieth-century juvenile justice system for two, young Black boys named Elwood and Turner. The Nickel Boys explores how Elwood and Turner come to depend on one another through times of unimaginable trauma, loss of innocence, and grief. Sometimes your family is the one person standing right next to you and that bond not even the evilest of actions can break.

This novel is based upon unraveling the mystery of a real Florida reform school that operated for one hundred and eleven years destroying thousands of children’s lives. Elwood Curtis is about to enroll in college when an innocent mistake derails his future. A mistake that lands him at The Nickel Academy. A place that is supposed to turn inmates into “honorable and honest men.” A place in reality that is no more than a den of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. A place where corrupt officials exploit the goodwill intended for the academy. Elwood who enters the academy believing in… show more.

Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Florida, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reform school, the Nickel Academy. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel appealed to me for three reasons: (1) because I was only glancingly aware of the horrors of these nightmarish reform schools found not just in Tallassee, the setting of The Nickel Boys, but elsewhere across the country. (2) because my heart went out to sweet, naïve Elwood and his friend Turner, another delinquent who, in contrast to Elwood, is entirely cynical. (3) because, as the terrifying events at Nickel and the tension between these… show more.

“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.” I’ve always found these words by E.L. Doctorow a compelling argument for the unique power of fiction to enliven the past. Yet when thinking about the lives of people of color, you can’t count on everyone knowing the history much less caring about what it felt like for them to live it. Fortunately, we’re living in a golden age of historical fiction, a time when some of the most imaginative and intellectually challenging books are reimagining stories that have been lost—or that have never… show more.