Elwood Curtis is a hard-working, educated, and sensitive black teenager who lives with his grandmother in Frenchtown outside of Tallahassee, Florida, in the 1960's. On his way to college for the first time, unexpected circumstances find him in a dire situation and sentenced to serve in a state "reform school" for boys. The facility is full of unbridled racism, physical and sexual abuse, neglect, corruption, and the other forms of sadistic behavior by the staff as well as some of the other "students." While legend has it that there are only four ways to leave the school, Elwood thinks he's figured out a fifth...and he's willing to give it a try.
While a work of fiction, the novel is based on a real place and real events that were only recently uncovered at a youth detention facility in the state. At times uplifting because of Elwood's innocence and hope, and disturbing because of the torture inflicted on him, THE NICKEL BOYS is a book that needs to be read by people of every color so that places and tragic events like this cease to exist permanently.
This review is based on a digital ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Heartbreaking. Certain to be a bookclub favorite and required reading for schools. The writing is clear, honest and bold. When bad luck lands a boy in a reform school that is not what it appears to be, he must nurture the dream in his heart if he is to survive. A hymn to friendship. Thank you Netgalley for an advance copy.

There are good books. There are great books. And then there are books that are … more.

Books that marry deft, propulsive prose with potent, stomach-punch emotions and meticulously-conceived characters. Books that tell remarkable stories while simultaneously transcending the stories being told. Books that take hold of your brains and your guts with equally ironclad grips, demanding your attention and imagination.

Books like Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys.”

Whitehead has long been considered among the best of his writerly generation; his last offering – 2016’s “The Underground Railroad” – won the Pulitzer Prize, among many others. The staggering thing is this: he’s still getting better.

“The Nickel Boys” is Whitehead’s seventh book – and arguably his best yet. He eschews the genre flourishes with which his previous storytelling ventures have been peppered, instead committing to a straightforward realism that allows just the briefest glimmers of hopefulness against a nigh-unrelentingly bleak backdrop.

Elwood Curtis is a young black man living in segregated Tallahassee, Florida in the 1960s. He’s precocious; smart and hardworking and compassionate. He was abandoned by his parents, but he has grown up under the auspices of his grandmother’s loving ferocity. He is quietly inspired by the Civil Rights movement; the only record in the house is one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches, worn away by countless relistening.

His is a bright future – until being in the wrong place at the wrong time leads to his being sent to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory whose admirable mission statement and public face hide the brutal truth. Behind the scenes, the Nickel Academy is a churning maelstrom of racism, sadism and opportunism, rife with physical and emotional abuse. The only way to get out is to keep your head down and get along.

Elwood’s struggles are lightened somewhat by Turner, a Nickel returnee whose understanding of the way things work is breathtakingly cynical … and largely accurate. The two boys become friends, each helping the other deal with the daily horrors that come with being beholden to a corrupt system that actively loathes everything about them.

Interspersed throughout, there are interludes of an older Elwood, reflecting on how the dark damages inflicted upon him and others by the Nickel Academy have followed him into adulthood, a constant shadowy companion that he has never and will never shake. And when news comes out about a particularly horrifying discovery on the grounds of the now-closed school, Elwood finds himself diving deeper into that past than he has in years … and there are still secrets yet to be revealed.

“The Nickel Boys” is one of the most emotionally fraught books I’ve read since … well, maybe ever. There’s a deeply unsettling verisimilitude to the Nickel Academy – no wonder, since Whitehead drew inspiration from a real place (The Dozier School for Boys, a Florida reformatory with a dark history of pain). By mining that reality, the book evokes a sense of truth that makes the events contained therein hit all the harder.

So much of Whitehead’s work involves race and how race impacts the American experience. Those themes are explored again in “The Nickel Boys,” albeit more directly than in past offerings. That directness lends even more heft to the already-meaty discourse he drives; it’s the sort of generational work that lands an author an honored place in the literary pantheon, though one could make the argument that Whitehead is a standard bearer for his generation of black writers and hence already has a spot. Still, after this one, he’s probably going to need to be moved up this list.

The slim volume comes in at just 224 pages, yet still overflows with furious poetry and intellectual rawness. It unspools with pacing that feels breakneck while also managing to elicit a sense of stasis; the whole thing practically drips with the frustrations of the societal status quo, even as we move back and forth through the years.

Words like “haunting” get tossed around a lot by critics – it serves as a handy shorthand term, even if it isn’t always totally accurate. In the case of “The Nickel Boys,” however, it could not be more apt. The injustices done to Elwood and Turner and their respective efforts to resist and rise against … those shadows linger. This story IS haunting, in more ways than one.

And of course, we have to recognize the narrative brilliance that Whitehead brings to the table. There’s a stunning vividity to his language; perhaps more than any other American writer, he has the ability to let the reader see through his eyes and hear through his ears. His is a finely-crafted and exquisitely-detailed vision – and thanks to his particular and considerable skills, we can experience it as fully realized.

It has been some time since a book inspired such strong reactions in me. We’re talking literal out-loud gasps; whether they were brought on by a particularly powerful phrase or a beautifully executed narrative turn, their impacts on me were audible.

Thought-provoking, powerful and shatteringly sad, “The Nickel Boys” is easily the best book of 2019 thus far … and it’s awfully tough to think that any other work will surpass it. It is a masterpiece, executed flawlessly by one of our most gifted writers. A worthwhile and magnificent addition to the 21st century canon … and the best yet in a career already rife with excellence.

There are good books. There are great books. And then there are books that are … more.

“The Nickel Boys” is more.

Published by Doubleday on July 16, 2019

The Nickel Boys is set in the 1960s, while Jim Crow was still the rule in the South. Blacks are jailed because of their skin color. They die in jail because of their skin color. They are beaten for wearing a military uniform because of their skin color. They are denied educational opportunities because of their skin color. They get sent to reform school for the offense of homelessness because of their skin color. An atmosphere of fear and injustice permeates the novel.

The story follows Elwood Curtis, who begins the novel as a dishwasher in Tallahassee. Elwood istens to recordings of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and looks forward to the day when Dr. Kinng's dream of equal opportunity will come true. In high school, Elwood moves on to a job in a tobacco shop, hoping to save money for college. Dr. King’s admonition that “we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity” inform the life Elwood is trying to achieve.

Elwood lives with his grandmother, who fears the civil rights movement as much as she appreciates its achievements, including being able to sit wherever she wants on the bus. When Elwood marches with college students to protest a theater that won’t serve black customers, his grandmother worries that he is putting his life at risk. She is “a survivor but the world took her in bites.”

Elwood enrolls in a junior college and seems be walking the streets with a sense of dignity when he hitches a ride with a man who is driving a stolen car. That misfortune sets the scene for the heart of the novel.

Elwood is sent to Nickel Reform School. A prelude, set in the present, explains that archeology students have interred bodies in the Nickel Reform School cemetery that show clear evidence of abuse. Even more troubling are the bodies buried on school property, outside of the cemetery, the unacknowledged dead. The prelude foreshadows a difficult time for Elwood as a Nickel boy.

In his acknowledgements, Colson Whitehead tells the reader that Nickel Reform School is inspired by the story of Florida’s Dozier School for Boys. Whitehead’s fictional account of the Nickel Reform School echoes the horrific reality of Dozier, including the investigation of grave sites.

Like Dozier, the fictional Nickel Reform School separates black and white inmates. Its purpose is to instill docility and obedience. Elwood learns that standing up for the weak against the bullies is likely to lead to a beating by the bullies and another by the staff. Such are the moral values instilled by reform schools.

The novel explains the fate of a boy whose body is disinterred fifty years later. His story is still told by rings screwed into trees in the woods, rings to which boys were shackled before being whipped: “Testifying to anyone who cares to listen.”

Inspired by the teachings of Dr. King and the actions of Rosa Parks, Elwood wants to do his part to encourage nonviolent reform of the evils he sees at Nickel. Will he have the courage? The novel suggests that the unlikeliest people, when oppressed, can find courage. Even fruitless efforts can inspire the kind of dignity that Dr. King deemed essential to the human spirit.

The Nickle Boys is not a feel-good fantasy about a young man who overcomes adversity, although it does acknowledge the possibility of defeating internalized demons. Places like Nickel ­— described as one of hundreds “scattered across the land like pain factories” — existed to break an inmate’s spirt. Opportunities lost might never be regained. With perseverance and luck, an intelligent person can build a life, even achieve a semblance of success, but that life will be shackled to the past. Survivors of institutions are “denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary.”

This is a short novel, all the fat trimmed away to tell a compact but far-reaching story. The ending comes as a complete surprise. It is a fitting resolution to a captivating novel. Like The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys illustrates Colson Whitehead’s ability to personalize the history of injustice. The story is gut-wrenching and emotionally charged. The Nickel Boys reminds readers of how far the nation has come and how much farther it must go to honor its promise of equal justice under the law.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was a fan of Colson Whitehead's last book The Underground Railroad. It was a very difficult read but a very good story. This book echoes that sentiment. It wasn't an easy read due to the subject matter but it was a very good story. Whitehead does an amazing job of developing the main character, Elwood Curtis. For some, they could probably remember the events that took place during the time frame of the book. Elwood's story begins in 1962 and he obsessively listens to a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. record over and over. He admires the civil rights movement leaders and mentions several key events in history. Whitehead does a great job of introducing Jim Crow era experiences to those like myself who could never imagine experiences as such. In my opinion, the best historical fiction is drawn from true stories and this was no exception. In Whitehead's previous novel, he introduces the story of a slave in the south and in this novel, he introduces a segregated reform school and the horrors that ensued within. I would recommend this book to those who were drawn to the writing of Whitehead either in "Underground Railroad" or prior. Fans of historical fiction should definitely read this and honestly, I think most Americans should read this because it is a story that isn't told often at all. Powerful and sticks with you long after finishing this short novel.

"The capacity to suffer. Elwood—all the Nickel boys—existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who would have destroyed them? To make that leap?”

“Their daddies taught them how to keep a slave in line, passed down this brutal heirloom. Take him away from his family, whip him until all he remembers is the whip, chain him up so all he knows is chains. A term in an iron sweatbox, cooking his brains in the sun, had a way of bringing a buck around, and so did a dark cell, a room aloft in darkness, outside time.”

“Most of those who know the story of the rings in the trees are dead by now. The iron is still there. Rusty. Deep in the heartwood. Testifying to anyone who cares to listen.”
Elwood Curtis from Tallahassee, Frenchtown.
As a young man he carried himself differently than other peers from his community, industrious and had a steady nature.
Started his keen interest in reading with comics, including ones like Hardy Boys, The Crypt of Terror and The Vault of Horror, he progressed to encyclopaedias and Life magazine in his new job, a magazine that exposed him to more real tales of horror and the rights struggle, he would listen to recordings of Reverend King’s speeches.

A great man was taking form in the heart of a young man, in this poignant stark tale of courage and endurance, Elwood, one well read, heart at conflict with all the inequality around, forging forward, standing up, conscious and heart moving toward a path an active movement forward for rights and equality in an unequal word and place of residence The Nickel.
He wanted people and his race to stand up for themselves, fate threw tragedy in his path in this tale and the journey and road memorable and never to be forgotten.

A pursuit of happiness against the injustices and terrors, a soul finding some ground, strength, courage and voice with important passages containing American terrible horrors and histories, stark realities in time gone and time present.

Colson Whitehead creating a stark continuous dream and nightmare within the reader with Elwood Curtis and The Nickel Boys, Elwood with all that ambition and hope, intelligence and courage, grit and resilience.

While not as captivating as The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys grows on you after you read it. It's a compelling story, and there are no happy endings here.

Colson Whitehead has this incredible gift of being a master storyteller. I am confident he will go down as one of the most prolific writers of our generation. He has this way with words to immerse the reader so deeply where one can feel the emotions Mr. Whitehead must have felt as he was writing. I was not sure what to think when I picked up this book as I was warned it included some abuse and sexual abuse and to be honest I wasn't sure if this book would be as great of a follow up as The Underground Railroad but this book ticked all of my boxes. It exposed me to a world greatly different than my own and taught me about a topic I new nothing about. While there were some scenes that I felt were more descriptive than I would have preferred, this novel is a true gem. I look forward to seeing how far this book goes and what the author brings us in the future.

I became so attached to the main character that, at times, I hesitated to turn the page for fear of something bad happening to him. The author handles the horrid circumstances of this reformatory school with restraint without glossing over the terrible activities that occurred there. The writing is perfectly tuned to the times. The quotes from Dr. M.L. King were powerful in this novel's setting and are just as powerful to reflect on today. Man's inhumanity to man is always such terrible thing to think about. Yet, somehow, the novel manages to end on a hopeful note.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC to read and review.

This book was based on the events at the Dozier School for Boys, a reform school for boys where beatings, torture, rape were a regular occurance, and death was the ultimate punishment.

In Colson Whitehead’s novel, the story centers around two friends, Elwood and Turner. Elwood and Turner are very different. Elwood believes in the dream of the civil rights movement, standing up for injustices, fairness and change in the face of Jim Crow. He had a family that included his grandmother and community. He had goals and was going to college. Turner though, had no family, and is a cynic He’s seen it all, and this is his second stint at nickel. Despite their continued differences, the two become friends. Turner takes Elwood under his wing, showing how to navigate Nickel and avoid trouble. While under Turner’s wing, Elwood remains unchanged. This is despite the circumstances that landed him at Nickel and despite what he sees happening at Nickel.

I am torn between describing Elwood as an optimist or just incredibly naive. I settled for naive. He believed so much in Dr. King and the civil rights movement, but it didn’t appear he fully understood the realities of Jim Crow even as he became a victim of those justices Turner was a great counter to Elwood. Their dueling views made them complementary characters.

I was familiar with the story of the Dozier School for Boys before I began reading this book. Yet for me, this book was a tough read because while the story of Nickel is fiction, the events that occurred throughout this book, were some young boys’ reality, and that is tragic. This was my first book by Whitehead. He does an amazing job painting a picture without getting graphic. I won’t give anything away, but I was taken by surprise by ending, which speaks to the job that Whitehead does with this novel. I was very happy to receive this as ARC and definitely recommend.

Truly an incredible piece of writing. This book delivers gutpunch after gutpunch, made all the worse for knowing that while the story is fictional, the horrors are drawn from real life. It may take place in the era of Jim Crow and segregation, but it's all too relevant to today and Whitehead does an excellent job of drawing those comparisons.

The Nickel Boys is a harrowing look at the trauma of justice under Jim Crow as told through the fictional experiences of two young men sentenced to juvenile detention at the Nickel Academy, a fictional stand-in for the real life Dozier School for Boys in Florida. The Nickel Boys are admitted for crimes of malingering, mopery, and incorrigibility, just as the generations before them had served time for vagrancy, changing employers without permission, and “bumptious contact,” i.e. bumping into a white person or failing to step off the sidewalk to let a white person pass.

The goal at Nickel Academy is to earn points and status rank, the rulebook for which no one had ever seen because, “like justice, it existed in theory.” Achieving status would mean the interred might get discharged, fully “reformed,” rather than end up in an unmarked grave on the property.

The beatings are senseless and violent. Boys disappear in the middle of the night, never to be seen again (until students from the University of South Florida exhume their unmarked graves many years later).

One will make it out and live to tell the tale; he’ll even go on to subconsciously name his business after the highest-level status rank could achieve at Nickel, the level that got you out of the academy: “Ace: out in the free world to make your zigzag way.” As characters, Elwood represents the strain of thought that believes social change is possible, that humans can aspire to and achieve a higher purpose together, while Turner, grounded in this world, understands it is dumb and mean and one must learn to navigate that.

Does the moral arc of the universe bend towards justice? Whitehead doesn't take a side in the telling of this story, leaving the reader a lot to chew on.

A horrifying yet restrained story of a boy's reform school in the Civil Rights era. Elwood and Turner help each other navigate the colored campus of a notorious boys' school where scamps and petty criminals find themselves locked up until they serve out their sentence, turn 18, get promoted to "Ace" for good behavior or run away. The fate of those who have attempted to run are grisly and recounted by the staff as warnings. Grim warnings also trickle in from other boys about the "white house" and "out back". Turner is quickly working his way up through the ranks counting on being promoted to Ace despite the fact this is his second stint at Nickel whereas Elwood, inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr. sets himself up to make change on a grander scale. Though well-defined, I was expecting the characters to come to life even more brutally and painfully than they did, but then again, this is a novel constrained by truth. The White House was an actual macabre feature at a boys' school in Florida. The survivors have come together online and are the inspiration for this unflinching novel about race, brutality, and resilience.

Heartbreaking novel based on a real life ‘school’ for boys. Boys, both black and white, were abused, beaten, traumatized. Some survived, some didn’t. A gripping story that is hard to put down, but also devastating to read. A must-read, a painful look at the past and present.

We know that Mr. Whitehead is a master story-teller, able to propel his tale at a quick pace while building the reader’s concern for his characters. By choosing to set his story in the Sixties, Whitehead is able to weave the story of a young man’s battle against continuing injustice with the struggles of Black America’s quest for equality. Though both white and black boys suffered horrible abuse in the very real Dozier Reform School, the recent excavations of unmarked graves have found three times the number of African American remains. The Dozier survivors are finally receiving a measure of redemption. Elwood and Turner eventually receive it, too --- just not in the way you’d expect. Get ready for a plot twist that only a master story-teller can deliver.

I am still reeling after reading Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys—a work of fiction inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys that survived for 111 years in Marianna, Florida, and damaged more than 1,000 boys at best estimate.

College-bound protagonist Elwood Curtis’ dreams are dashed when an innocent blunder leads him to The Nickel Academy, the fictional remake of Dozier, which does very little if anything to “reform” the boys but, instead, crushes more than their dreams. The “voices” of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Baldwin offer a bit of hope for Elwood until their wisdom is whacked away by the deplorable conditions and brutal treatment. In fact, it is in the novel’s Jim Crow 1960s setting that Elwood and other black boys, as in real life, receive horrendous treatment: bullying, beatings, emotional abuse, sexual violation, slave-type labor, food deprivation, substandard education, inferior housing, and a lack of the basic needs for cleanliness. Death at the hands of the staff is the only reprieve for many of the boys who are buried in unmarked graves and whose families are never truthfully informed of the cause of death. Many parents are even led to believe that their son just ran away from the facility.

The dramatic plot twists in this novel are riveting, and the writing is some of Whitehead’s best.

Highly recommended!

This review also appears on Goodreads under the pseudonym "Writing Soul."

Colson Whitehead has done it again. Each sentence resonates with resolve, anger, truth and also love. The systematic oppression of Black Americans is on display in this book, as well as the lasting effect of trauma on boys undeserving of such treatment. Rage and violence are the norm, but shreds of dignity remain as one man tries to live a better life despite his torment.

Editor's note: Upon receiving a final copy of "The Nickel Boys," a review of this novel will appear at Mountain Times (Boone, N.C.)

As with Colson Whitehead's 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Underground Railroad," the past is prologue in this follow-up to that novel, "The Nickel Boys."
But just as certain in this important and impressive work, prologue is past ... and present and future.
"No one believed them until someone else said it," Colson writes in the opening of his seventh work of fiction.
Left unsaid: Like so much else.
The horrors of sexual and physical abuse at this boys' reformatory have been dramatized by Colson here, but they are based on a real institution and also left unsaid — because, horribly, it doesn't need to be said — is that this institution is not alone in its history of transforming boys into bitter and damaged men.
Our hero is an exception, a Nickel Boy "who went by the name of Elwood Curtis," a man who wrestles with his demons but has managed as an adult to start and run a successful business, and more impressively, start and manage a successful relationship.
Colson isn't known for withholding a punch and he holds back none here. While the novel doesn't reach the Pulitzer quality of "Underground Railroad," it comes damn close in relating the stories of those damned and subjected to the unforgiving evil of a penal institution for youths.
In this tale of sadism and barbarity, where men who are entrusted with reform and care "stored up violence like a battery," Colson takes his readers on another important journey — one in which the view is dark but not distant, and one which portends a future we are wont to repeat if no one cares to look.

A reflection on how easily and unjustly a life of promise could be snuffed out as recently as the 1960s. It is not sensationalized, but reported. The format of the book worked well.

A boys’ reform school in Florida is at the heart of this novel, based on a very real school that existed there. It took me much longer to read this book than it should have. It packs a gut punch to anyone with a conscience and was impossible to read at bedtime. Should everyone read it? Absolutely. Just be ready to process another look at how our society systematically robs young men of any promise they might have.