Finished: The Nickel Boys (Whitehead) As tragic as it is compelling, The Nickel Boys, set in Florida in the 1960's, tells the story of the horrific reform "school" for boys known as Nickel. Based on the real life Dozier School for Boys in Florida, the atrocities that happened at the school to, primarily, the African American boys ranged from beatings, to starvation, to rape, to torture, and even to death. The story follows Elwood Curtis, an outstanding high school student who is excited about starting college classes a couple of times a week. He makes the mistake of hitchhiking to the college early on start day to get the lay of the land, and the man he catches a ride from has just stolen the car he's driving. I don't know if it's sadder that Elwood got sent to Nickel for something he didn't do, or that he and his grandmother were helpless to put up any kind of legal fight for him. The horror of both the real life Dozier school and the fictional Nickel were uncovered over 40 years later when excavation teams uncovered a field full of unmarked graves. In The Nickel Boys, Elwood befriends a couple of other boys, and one boy, Turner, tries to teach him how to keep his head down and just do what he's told to eventually work his way out of his sentence. One of the two boys survives and goes on to tell what went on at Nickel. My heart just ached reading about the horrible treatment of these boys...some as young as five years old. I feel like this was a timely read with what's going on in the United States right now and I sadly feel as if there are some misguided, evil people who would still gladly send away young black men for no good reason.