Hardcover | 224 pages

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
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In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning #1New York TimesbestsellerThe Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwoods only salvation is his friendship with fellow delinquent Turner, which deepens despite Turners conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwoods ideals and Turners skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.

Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children,The Nickel Boysis a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.