The Nickel Boys, published in 2019, is a novel by Colson Whitehead about the fictional Nickel Academy and its students (the "Nickel Boys"), based on the real-life Dozier school. The Dozier School, like its fictional counterpart, was a reform school in Florida that housed students for a little over a century until 2011. The horrifying abuse that occurred within the school was only uncovered in 2009, when a state inspection triggered a government-mandated investigation that revealed a long history of sexual and physical abuse and led to the school's permanent closure two years later.
Whitehead's novel adapts the events of the Dozier School as its central plot, beginning with a prologue that chronicles the discovery of a secret burial ground with boys' bodies on a plot of land that used to be Nickel Academy, a reform school where boys were sent after being convicted of crimes. The discovery draws media attention as well as the attention of one of the former boys, Elwood Curtis. Curtis was one of the few boys who managed to escape Nickel, and he now lives in New York City. The novel continues to explore both Elwood in the present and Elwood's past, following the events that led to his arrival at Nickel Academy and his time spent there as his hopeful, moralistic character clashes with the cruelty and evil that permeates Nickel's administration and students.
The Nickel Boys has garnered abundant praise for its "devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption." It won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—Whitehead's second win in the category. The novel has received many additional accolades, including winning the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and being long-listed for the National Book Award. Whitehead's sparse prose style emphasizes the horrifying nature of life at Nickel Academy and the effects it has on its students. The novel explores themes of trauma, memory, justice, abuse, post-trauma, and race. In particular, the novel depicts the history of racism in America as an institution sanctioned, funded, and kept quiet by the government.
