Was the setting real?

The Nickel Boys is a novel written by American author Colson Whitehead, his most famous work The Underground Railroad. It is planned to be released on the 16th of July 2019 by Doubleday, though arcs have already been given out. The story spans over 224 pages, capturing a school named “The Florida Dozier School for Boys”, a real school that was opened in over a hundred year, only to close in 2011. The horrendous events that the boys that were sent to the school had to go through is captured in the renamed Nickel Academy through the eyes of Elwood.