During an “environmental study,” a team of archaeologists unearths a secret graveyard on the grounds of what used to be Nickel Academy, a reform school that recently closed. Because the bodies are largely unidentified, the state of Florida is forced to reopen investigations into the many “abuse stories” related to the infamous institution. As the media reports the grisly findings of the archaeology team, the school’s alumni—known as the Nickel Boys—continue to post stories to a website, where they can talk about the violent physical, emotional, and sexual abuse they endured at Nickel. The Nickel Boys have been organizing yearly trips to the school and speaking openly about their horrific pasts for several years, but nobody paid attention until the archaeology team corroborated their claims. One Nickel Boy who goes by the name of Elwood Curtis lives in New York City and keeps tabs on the various stories about Nickel, but he doesn’t return to the school, thinking that there’s no use confronting his painful past.
Elwood grew up in Tallahassee in the 1950s and ’60s, living with his grandmother and accompanying her to work at the Richmond Hotel. Spending his time in the kitchen, young Elwood wonders when he’ll see the first black patron sitting at one of the tables in the dining room. The Supreme Court has just declared that segregated schools are unlawful, so he thinks that soon all the “visible walls” will come crashing down. However, his grandmother tells him that “it’s one thing to tell someone to do what’s right and another thing for them to do it.”
As a teenager, Elwood works at a cigar shop owned by an Italian American man named Mr. Marconi. Mr. Marconi is kind and laidback, but Elwood still works especially hard. This is because he wants to cultivate a “sense of dignity,” drawing this idea from the ideas that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expresses in Martin Luther King At Zion Hill, the only record Elwood owns. On this record, Dr. King urges African Americans to respect themselves by working hard and proudly renouncing bigotry. Taking this to heart, Elwood develops a strong moral compass and refuses to compromise his values, which sometimes gets him into trouble. Nonetheless, Elwood excels as a hard worker and a successful student.
When he’s an upperclassman in high school, Elwood meets his new history teacher, Mr. Hill. Mr. Hill is a young black man involved in the Civil Rights Movement, so Elwood takes an immediate liking to him. Mr. Hill also recognizes Elwood’s strong work ethic and passion for equality, quickly taking him under his wing. Around this time, Elwood decides to attend a protest outside the Florida Theatre, a segregated cinema in Tallahassee. Against his grandmother’s orders, he attends the rally, and though he initially feels out of place, he soon sees Mr. Hill in the crowd. Inviting him into a small group of dedicated activists, Mr. Hill helps Elwood feel a sense of unity and communal support for the first time.
That summer, Mr. Hill tells Elwood about an opportunity to attend Melvin Griggs Technical, an African American college looking for motivated young men like him to take free classes while finishing their high school degrees. Thrilled, Elwood pursues this opportunity. On his first day of class, he hitchhikes from Tallahassee to the school, getting into a fancy car driven by a black man. Before long, a police officer forces the car to the side of the road and arrests both the driver and Elwood—the car, it turns out, was stolen. Rather than attending Melvin Griggs, then, Elwood is sentenced by a judge to Nickel Academy, a ruthless reform school that illegally segregates its white and black students.
On his first night at Nickel, Elwood walks into the bathroom to find two bullies named Lonnie and Black Mike beating up a younger boy named Corey. When he tries to intervene, a staff member reports all four boys to Superintendent Spencer, a fearsome white man. Elwood has already met Spencer, who explained how Nickel works when he first arrived on campus. Boys earn merits for working hard and behaving well, and these points help them move up the ranks. If a student earns enough points, he will be released once more into the free world.
At one in the morning, Spencer and his sidekick, Earl, take the four boys from their beds and bring them to the White House, a squat building in which they torture students. One at a time, they take the boys into another room and beat them. Although Elwood tries to keep track of how many lashes he receives, he passes out before Spencer finishes.
For weeks after his first beating, Elwood is confined to the school’s infirmary, where he makes friends with Turner, a boy from his dorm who ate soap to avoid work and school. The schedule at Nickel is yet another thing that shocks Elwood, since the boys only attend class every other day, spending the rest of their time doing physical labor. Worse, Elwood has discovered that academic performance doesn’t influence a student’s progress toward “graduation.” Rather, only work and obedience earn merits, and there’s no telling when a staff member might dole out subtractions and punishment.
Turner tells Elwood that he received more lashes than most students but that he was still lucky, since sometimes boys never return from the White House. This astounds Elwood, who insists that he and Turner ought to do something to publicize Nickel’s injustices, but Turner scoffs at him, saying that the only way to survive in this place is to keep to oneself. Elwood doesn’t like this idea because it goes against his “sense of dignity,” but he tries to follow Turner’s advice when he gets out of the hospital, diligently applying himself to his work and keeping out of trouble. Not long after he leaves the infirmary, Turner recommends Elwood for a position on the Community Service team, of which he himself is a part. The Community Service supervisor is a young white man named Harper who treats Turner and Elwood kindly, saying that he more or less sees them as equals. With Harper, the two boys drive around the nearby town of Eleanor to complete chores and also illicitly sell goods that the school receives from the government.
The narrative periodically jumps forward in time, detailing Elwood’s life in New York City as an adult. Having arrived in the city shortly after leaving Nickel, Elwood works as a successful professional mover. One day roughly 50 years after his stay at Nickel, he runs into a Nickel Boy named Chickie Pete. Chickie insists that they have a drink, so they go to a bar and talk about the past, avoiding discussing Spencer and his violent ways. Chickie is an alcoholic who has had a hard life after leaving Nickel, but he’s overjoyed to see Elwood, relishing any opportunity to talk about the past. When Chickie asks when Elwood got out of Nickel, Elwood is shocked to see that his former classmate doesn’t remember that he escaped. All these years, he has thought that the story of his escape must have been a source of inspiration for his peers. Now, though, he realizes that the administration kept his success story a secret. When Elwood leaves the bar, he feels a flash of anger that somebody like Chickie Pete survived Nickel Academy when his own friend did not, though it’s not yet clear what, exactly, this means.
Returning to the 1960s, a group of government workers is scheduled to inspect Nickel. Director Hardee hears ahead of time about the inspection and cancels classes so the students and staff can repair the campus. Elwood decides to write a letter outlining the school’s unlawful dealings, since he’s been keeping a list of the deliveries he and Turner make as part of their Community Service work. When he tells Turner that he’s planning to slip the letter to the inspectors, Turner grows angry, insisting that this is only going to get Elwood killed. After all, he has recently shown his friend the two iron rings on the edge of campus, where Spencer sometimes chains black students and tortures them to death, subsequently claiming that his victims have escaped. “They going to take you out back, bury your ass,” Turner seethes, but Elwood refuses to listen.
On the day of the inspection, Elwood puts the letter in his pocket. However, the only time he’s close to the inspectors is when he’s standing in plain view, so can’t deliver it. He decides to try again that afternoon, but Harper asks him to run an errand on the other side of campus, which will make it impossible for him to complete the task. But then, seeing Elwood’s disappointment, Turner says he’ll deliver the letter himself.
Turner successfully gives Elwood’s letter to the inspectors. That night, Spencer takes Elwood to the White House and gives him yet another beating before putting him in solitary confinement. The only reason he doesn’t kill him right away is because he’s worried the government will take Elwood’s letter seriously and look into the matter. When three weeks pass and nothing of the sort happens, Turner hears that Spencer is going to kill Elwood the next day. He helps Elwood escape in the middle of the night, taking him to an empty house nearby before setting out on stolen bicycles. Turner has always said he wouldn’t take anyone with him if he tried to escape, but he’s breaking his own rule because he knows Elwood would die if he didn’t help him. Around dawn, the Community Service van appears behind the two boys. Ditching their bikes, they jump over a fence and run through a long field. Harper and another staff member get out of the van and chase after them with shotguns. Just as Turner looks back, Harper shoots Elwood, and Turner jumps over yet another fence and disappears into the woods.
At the end of the novel, Turner finally returns to Florida. For the past 50 years he has been using Elwood’s name as his own. He sees this as a tribute to Elwood, who he hopes would be proud of the life he’s built. He’s now married to a loving woman named Millie, and though he kept her in the dark about his past, he finally tells her the truth about his time at Nickel. Hearing this, she gives him support and accepts that he must return to Nickel to properly bury Elwood’s body. When he arrives in Tallahassee, Turner checks into his hotel and goes downstairs for dinner. As he waits for a server, he reads the menu and learns that the hotel used to be called the Richmond, and though he doesn’t remember Elwood’s story about sitting in the kitchen and dreaming about a black person eating in the dining room, he unwittingly fulfills his old friend’s wish.
