Based on a real Florida reform school, the Nickel Boys follows the experience of Elwood Curtis and his friend Turner. A bright young black kid from Tallahassee, Elwood is on his way to his first college course as an outstanding high school student when he takes a ride from the wrong car and is picked up as an accomplice to grand theft auto. Thrown into the Nickel Academy, his dreams turn to nightmares as early college courses and new possibilities become arbitrary beatings and heinous living conditions. Whitehead treats his subject with a sensitivity and depth of emotion only a masterful novelist can achieve. His tale shows how the institution of racism reverberates down through each concurrent generation, hiding itself in plain sight.