The Nickel Boys

"I almost didn’t read this book. I knew it was based on a real reform school for boys in Florida that was both violent and racist, and I was afraid of what I would find in it. Colson Whitehead does not hold back on the cruelties suffered by the inmates of the Nickel Academy. One of them, Elwood Curtis, ends up at Nickel through a twist of fate. He forges a friendship with a boy named Turner who guides the idealistic Elwood through this brutal new world with a clear-eyed reality. It is in this friendship that Whitehead finds a way to give this story a turn that takes it to an unexpected place – where a new life is possible even as the pain of the past is never forgotten."

"I read both The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad and can't wait to read his new work."

"Colson Whitehead's 'The Nickel Boys.'"