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The nickel boys : a novel

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First edition.

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning The 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.00As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."00In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.00The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.

Available copies

  • 74 of 78 copies available at Westchester Library System.

Current holds

6 current holds with 78 total copies.

View other formats and editions

Book 2 CD Audiobook 1 Large Print Book 1 English 3 Spanish 1 All formats and editions 4
Location Call Number /
Shelving Location
Barcode Status /
Due Date
Ardsley Public Library FICTION WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31000151228049
Available
-
Bedford Free Library FIC WHI (Text)
Fiction
31002150822889
Available
-
Bedford Hills Free Library WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31003151518237
Available
-
Briarcliff Manor Public Library FICTION WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31036150880323
Available
-
Bronxville Public Library FICTION WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31004151688053
Available
-
Bronxville Public Library FICTION WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31004151708851
Available
-
Chappaqua Library FICTION WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31005154462511
Available
-
Chappaqua Library FICTION WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31005500419173
Available
-
Croton Free Library FICTION/WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31006151737517
Checked out
04/27/2024
Dobbs Ferry Public Library WHITEHEAD (Text)
Fiction
31007151358247
Available
-
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Search Results Showing Item 3 of 5

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