THE NICKEL BOYS by Colson Whitehead

The author has changed the name of the place, but this novel is based on an actual boys’ reform school in Florida that finally closed in 2011.  Set in the Jim Crow era, this book exposes the horrific cruelty and corruption that prevailed at this school.  Behavioral infractions met with scores of lashes that often resulted in months in the infirmary or even death.  Food and supplies that the state provided were sold to local businesses, with school administrators pocketing the profits.  This book reminded me of Unbroken in its explicit renderings of torture, but at its heart it is the story of one teenager, Elwood Curtis.  His crime is for stealing a car in which he was just an unwitting hitchhiker, on his way to a college prep class.  Not only has Elwood never been in trouble, he is a model citizen, raised by his grandmother and inspired by Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches.  Even at the reformatory, Elwood strives to live by MLK’s words and holds fast to the belief that love and justice will ultimately win out.  However, as we’ve seen in recent months, evil seems to beget more evil, and those who perpetrated the horrors in this book are egged on and riled up by similarly minded men.  This book stirred up my emotions, particularly rage and horrified disbelief, just as the insurrectionists did on January 6.  If people are charging into the Capitol with Confederate flags and African-American boys are being dispatched with shotguns in the 21^st century, we still have a very long way to go toward any semblance of racial equality.  I am particularly outraged that the school administrators committed countless brutal murders and got away with it.  The twist at the end was a well-disguised surprise for me, but it did not improve my opinion of some of my fellow Floridians.