The Nickel Boys

The narrative alternates between the 1960s and the 2010s. Elwood Curtis is a studious African-American high-school student in Tallahassee, inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. On his way to his first university class he accepts a lift in a car that turns out to be stolen, and is sent to Nickel Academy, a racially segregated juvenile reformatory where boys face hard labour and brutal punishment.

There he befriends Turner, who takes a more cynical view of the world. Decades later, an investigation into the closed school forces Curtis to confront the lasting effects of his time there. The novel is based on the historic Dozier School in Florida.