“The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead is a “bravura follow-up” to his Pulitzer Prize winning     The “Underground Railroad”.  In it, two boys are sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. The Nickel Academy’s mission statement appears wholesome, but the staff   abuses the students while school officials raid the pantry.  One of the boys Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King’s pacifism; the other is bent on resistance.   This is a “devastating, driven narrative.”