The Nickel boys : a novel
(Playaway)

Title from container.

"HD."

"Light."

"Random House Audio."

Previously released by Penguin Random House, LLC., ℗2019.

Release date supplied by publisher.

Issued on Playaway, a dedicated audio media player.

One set of earphones and one AAA battery required for listening.

Read by JD Jackson.

"As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is a high school senior about to start classes at a local college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual, and moral training" so that the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks that Elwood is worse than naive, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision with repercussions that will echo down the decades."-- Provided by publisher.