Colson Whitehead may be the Hemingway of the 21st century. This dude don’t miss. He does it all. He does crime fiction. He does literary fiction. He comments on and documents the experience of Black Americans through the lens of furniture salesmen, elevator inspectors, runaway slaves, and with this novel, he’s blended literary historical fiction with The Nickel Boys commenting on the experience of two Black boys in the Jim Crow South.

Initially, I wanted to pick up this novel first rather than Underground Railroad and Crook Manifesto because I wanted to mine it for its themes of “Diapsora” in the American South. An idealistic boy is taken from his home in northern Florida and “taken into captivity” at the Nickel School. However, as I read. the progression of themes in the book that emphasize how these boys took a veritable hell and made the most of it was captivating to me. In the latter chapters as we cut to Elwood in the future living his life as a New Yorker, We are able to stitch together the heaven he has made with the hell of Nickel in his heart.

Hell never lets go. No matter how many decades go by, the pain and rage that Elwood feels for his experience at Nickel festers from the old wounds. But, somehow he doesn’t allow himself to succumb to the wounds.

The twist crushed me. As our expectations of Turner’s death are flipped on us, we’re left devastated that somehow the optimism and ideal world view that Elwood has is lost. But it isn’t. Elwood lives. Elwood delivered the letter, Elwood escaped from Nickel and Elwood lives to tell the tale. Turner is the man who sits in the restaurant at the end of the novel and breathes a sigh of comfort, patronizing the restaurant that his friend dreamed a Black man would one day sit in. And in a single meal, for a fleeting moment, justice.

Have no fear

C. Randir