NATIONAL BESTSELLER - In this Pulitzer Prize-winning follow-up to
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes
another strand of American history through the story of two boys
unjustly 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. Elwood's
only salvation is his friendship with fellow "delinquent" Turner, which
deepens despite Turner's 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 Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a
decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.
Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years
and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a
devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist
writing at the height of his powers and "should further cement Whitehead
as one of his generation's best" (Entertainment Weekly).
Look for Colson Whitehead's bestselling new novel, Harlem Shuffle!
