The Nickel Boys, published in 2019, is a novel by Colson Whitehead about the fictional Nickel Academy and its students (the "Nickel Boys"), based on the real-life Dozier School. The Dozier School, like its fictional counterpart, was a reform school in Florida that housed students for a little over a century until 2011. The horrifying abuse that occurred within the school was only uncovered in 2009, when a state inspection triggered a government-mandated investigation that revealed a long history of sexual and physical abuse and led to the school's permanent closure two years later.
Whitehead's novel adapts the events of the Dozier School as its central plot, beginning with a prologue...
