Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clearsighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide ‘physical, intellectual and moral training’ which will equip its inmates to become ‘honorable and honest men’.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear ‘out back’. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King’s ringing assertion, ‘Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.’ But Elwood’s fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood’s idealism and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is an extraordinary literary novel based on a real reform school in Florida during the Jim-Crow-era that operated for 111 years and destroyed the lives of thousands of children.

In the acknowledgements page, Colson Whitehead talks about the inspiration for this book — the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Archaeology students at the University of South Florida dug up an area surrounding the school and uncovered a secret graveyard. The students worked to identify the remains of countless students who had been tortured, raped, mutilated, and then buried beneath the ground.

In The Nickel Boys, the institution is called Nickel Academy, with two segregated establishments — one campus is for coloured boys, and the other is for white boys.

Protagonist Elwood Curtis was abandoned by his mother and left in the care of his loving, compassionate grandmother Harriet. He’s now in high school. He’s driven, intelligent, and he has his eyes set on graduating from the local community college. But one mistake — hitchhiking — lands him in Nickel Academy. The driver, Rodney, has stolen the car they’re riding in, and Elwood is considered guilty.

“There were three of them. The biggest one he’d seen last night, the boy who looked too old to attend Nickel. The giant was named Griff; in addition to his mature appearance, he was broad-chested and hunched like a big brown bear. Griff’s daddy, it was said, was on a chain gang in Alabama for murdering his mother, making his meanness a handed-down thing.”

Set in 1960s Florida, the book highlights segregation and the racism that was rife during that time. A black person could be arrested for not giving way to a white person on the sidewalk. Black people did things for free, and white people benefited.

Nickel Academy is technically not a prison, and boys usually don’t stay longer than 1-2 years in the place, but it is a nightmare, hellish place to live. When boys misbehave, they’re plucked from their beds in the middle of the night and taken to a former work shed called the White House.

Here, boys are strapped into a three-foot-long contraption called Black Beauty, and beaten. They’re whipped, stretched, and abused. The boys’ screams can be heard by everyone in Nickel Academy. Additionally, ‘out back’ is where the cruel and vicious staff take the boys who they plan to murder and bury beneath the ground.

“He spent another five days in the hospital, then it was back with the other Nickel boys. School and work. He was one of them now in many ways, including his embrace of silence. When his grandmother came to visit, he couldn’t tell her what he saw when Dr. Cooke removed the dressings and he walked the cold tile to bathroom.”

Whitehead is skilled at moving back and forth in time, seamlessly. We learn more about Elwood and his family as we progress through the novel. There are snippets here and there of his former life, his mother and father’s lives, and his childhood with his grandmother.

The prose is very elegant, lean and pared back — it’s a short book at 200 pages, and quick to read. The plot is riveting, drawing you in and refusing to let you go. I adore both Elwood and his best friend Turner, who are so different but find each other within the horrors of Nickel Academy.

Reading The Nickel Boys has encouraged me to purchase The Underground Railroad, which I had not gotten around to reading yet.

The Nickel Boys is one of my favourite reads of the year. As hard as the subject matter is to read at times, the writing is fantastic and eloquent, the characters larger-than-life. Highly recommended.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead
July 2019
Hachette Book Publishers

My father trained me to silence the way he trained his dogs, with food and a cane. Speech, he said, was poison. It scared the game, alerted the gamekeepers and betrayed your friends and family.

Tom Clay was a poacher back in Suffolk. He was twelve when he was caught, tried and transported to New South Wales.

Now, assigned to a shepherds’ hut out west, he is a boy among violent men. He keeps his counsel and watches over his sheep; he steers clear of blowhards like the new man, Rowdy Cavanagh. He is alert to danger, knowing he is a foreigner here: that the land resists his understanding.
The question is: how fast can he learn?

Because a vicious killer named Dan Carver is coming for Tom and Rowdy. And if Tom can’t outwit Carver in the bush – and convince Rowdy to keep his stupid mouth shut – their deaths will be swift and cruel.

Shepherd by Catherine Jinks is set in 1840 New South Wales, after the British colony convict 14-year-old Tom Clay of poaching and sentence him to work in Australia as a shepherd. The environment is brutal and violent, and Tom quickly learns how cruel and dangerous the other convicts can be.

Tom and Joe work at a shepherd’s hut west of Sydney — their role is to protect the master’s sheep from wild dogs. They have loyal dogs of their own to help with the task, called Gyp and Pedlar. Both men have come from England after being convicted of crimes. They’re also terrified of Dan Carver, who was working with them until recently. Prior to the events of the book, Tom and Joe had realised that Dan was a psychopathic murderer, and he was planning to kill the two of them. In self defence, they attacked him and left him to die in the wilderness.

But, Dan Carver isn’t dead, and he returns to the farm to seek vengeance on Tom, Joe, their new Irish shepherd Rowdy Cavanagh, and their beloved dogs. The group must fight for their lives to escape the vicious Dan Carver.

“My dreams are never good. In my poaching dreams, I’m always caught. In my dreams about Ma, she’s always on her deathbed. My father always beats me and my trial always ends on a hangman’s rope. Sometimes I dream that the ship bringing me to New South Wales founders and sinks. Sometimes I dream that I’m being flogged.”

Shepherd is about life in the Australian colonies — the dangers, the challenges, and difficulties of navigating the harsh Australian bush. Additionally, the book highlights the racism that these convicts exacted on Indigenous Australians.

The pacing of the novel is one of the biggest strengths, and in fact, the book takes place over only a few short days. We’re moving through the bush with Tom and Rowdy as they first try and evade Dan, and then decide to turn the tables and start formulating a plan to kill Dan.

Tom Clay has had a difficult childhood and upbringing, and doesn’t trust other people easily. He has huge affection for his dogs, and cares for them more than he cares for people. But, over the course of the novel, Tom and Rowdy bond and look out for each other. They even begin to trust in one another.

“Rowdy is so busy talking that he’s blind to where he is. This is a well-used path, heading straight for water, but he doesn’t comment on the musky smells, the droppings, the tracks, the feathers, the footprints, the marked tree trunks. When birds call and flit, he doesn’t pause to watch them in case they’re warning us of something bigger.”

At times, the nature of the plot got a bit tiresome. It’s a fast-paced pursuit in an unforgivable environment, and while this would look fantastic on a film screen, reading it in a book can get a little exhausting. It’s 200 pages of Tom Clay and Dan Carver up against each other, chasing and trapping and tricking and fighting. After a while, I felt like I was losing momentum in the story.

In saying that, I thought this novel was fantastic. The writing style is very lean — pared back. I didn’t feel like there was any overwriting, or excessive word choice. Catherine only wrote what was necessary for the story, and I was completely enthralled by the book. The dialogue is fabulous, the setting and atmosphere captured incredibly well, and the story really inviting for readers.

Recommended for adult readers who are interested in a short read set in the Australian wilderness of the 19th century. Readers must be interested in the Australian colonial setting to warm to this book, I suspect.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Shepherd
Catherine Jinks
July 2019
Text Publishing