Historical Fiction · DarkA bright Black teenager in 1960s Florida is sent to a brutal reform school
The Nickel Boys
A Black teenager in 1960s Florida is unjustly sent to a brutal reform school
Elwood Curtis is a Black teenager in 1960s Tallahassee, Florida. After an unjust conviction he is sent to the Nickel Academy, a brutal reform school. There he befriends Turner, a more cynical boy who believes the only way to survive is to stay out of trouble and look out for himself. Their clashing views of the world lead to a choice with consequences that last for decades. The novel is inspired by a real Florida reform school that operated for 111 years.
More about this book
Who
Elwood Curtis, a studious, idealistic Black teenager in 1960s Tallahassee, inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. He is selected to take university classes, but on his first day he hitches a ride in a stolen car, is convicted as a delinquent and is sent to Nickel Academy. There he befriends Turner, who is more cynical about the school.
World
The story moves between the 1960s and the 2010s. Nickel Academy is a fictional reform school in Eleanor, Florida, where boys are separated by race. The later sections are set in New York City, where an investigation into the closed school has begun.
What makes it different
The school is based on the real Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, which opened in 1900 and closed in 2011. Whitehead first learned of it on Twitter in 2014. After The Underground Railroad he chose to write a grounded, realistic book with none of the speculative elements of his earlier novels.
Feel
Serious and dark. It won the 2019 Kirkus Prize, the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and was filmed in 2024 as Nickel Boys.