The Nature of Things

The horrific story told by Colson Whitehead in his 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Nickel Boys, is made more horrific by the knowledge that it is based on a true story. In 2014, Whitehead learned of the project of archaeology students at the University of South Florida who were digging up remains of boys who had been tortured, raped, mutilated, and killed at a state-run school called Dozier School for Boys in the Florida Panhandle town of Marianna. The bodies were then deposited in a secret graveyard. The Dozier School was in business for a century and only closed in 2011. The graves of its victims were still being discovered even after Whitehead's book was published. It's unlikely that there will ever be a full accounting of the number of boys who were buried in all those hidden graves, but what is known is gruesome and nightmarish enough. Whitehead recreates Dozier as the Nickel Academy of Eleanor, Florida. It's a place where "delinquent" boys are sent by...