The Nickel Boys

"An infinite brotherhood of broken boys..."

How else could you describe it, this network of young men. Young men, grown into old men - if they're lucky - carrying the weight of racism and the heartbreak of their own past.

As our story opens, a secret graveyard is discovered on the site of an old reform school for boys in Florida. When the ground gives up its secrets, the men are forced to do the same. They look back on a nightmare of torture, abuse and terror in the Jim Crow south and the beatings they suffered at the hands of the white men who could get away with it.

The Nickel Boys is a tale that somehow manages to explain this torture with language that, at times, feels all too normal. Based on the story of a real-life torturous school, it bravely and quietly shouts the sins of generations. Young men locked up for nearly nothing, young men made wards of the state, young men forced to bend at the whims of the men in power. Some broke, some disappeared, some asked too many questions and were never seen again.

Colson Whitehead is a master, you guys. His book Underground Railroad won a Pulitzer and this book is another 'meat on the bones' tale that forces us to look back at this country's past without allowing decades to brush it away.

Our protagonist has a bright future, despite the poverty and the fact his parents abandoned him. A mixup - a slight misstep - and, he's thrust into The Nickel home for boys. Inspired by Dr. King, he is determined to right the wrongs through his own resistance, consequences be damned. You root for him, your heart breaks for him. And, Whitehead carries you through his story until a twist that changes everything.

This book feels complicated and simple and exquisite all at once. These broken boys...