Colson Whitehead on "The Nickel Boys" Author Colson Whitehead won a Pulitzer Prize for his bestselling 2016 novel "The Underground Railroad." He talks with Lee Cowan about his latest novel, "The Nickel Boys," a fictional tale of cruelty and trauma based on the notorious Alfred G. Dozer School for Boys outside Tallahassee, where the neglect and abuse of children was rampant for decades.