The Nickel Boys

The epilogue!

This Pulitzer prize winner was masterfully read by JD Jackson. It reveals a stark world in which wrong and racism are impossible to ignore. The story of a hopeful, smart black youth who is falsely accused of a crime and sent to a reform school modeled after Dozier school in FL. here he witnesses and experiences horrible treatment. But he eventually escapes and the institution is uncovered for the cess pit that it is. At what cost, however. Too ma...read more

After seeing Roxane Gay's book club on this book, I went and got it from the library. I thought Underground Railroad was fantastic and this book lives up there with it.

At the start of the Civil Rights movement, Elwood is a damn good kid. He listens to MLK speeches and tries hard to practice what MLK preaches, he takes a job after school and is a smart kid who is going places. Places like college classes while still in high school. You know Elwood...read more

This is one of those books that just wow you. Based on a true story, Whitehead tells us the story of a Elwood's experience in a Florida reform school in the 1960s. Segregated and violent, Nickel Academy marks every boy who passes through. As an adult, having made his way to New York City, he's created a good life for himself, but when the school is closed and archeologist's start discovering bodies of dead boys where they shouldn't be, he know...read more

Being from Tallahassee and not far from Dozier School for Boys (the school which Nickel is based on) I was very intrigued by this book. While the story in the book is fiction, the fact that it is based on a real place that once ran hurts my soul. I think this is a book that everyone needs to read.