Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys: A Novel demonstrates the impacts of trauma upon the body and the body’s experience of temporality. Uncovering the trauma of The Nickel Boys requires seeing and hearing the narratives of the characters and coming to terms with its historical counterpart. The stories of those who lived through the Dozier School for Boys are mirrored in the experiences of the characters, thus positing for the importance of coming to terms with the trauma through both history and fiction. In the lives and deaths of Elwood and Griff, the novel depicts the extent to which those traumas, as enforced by the government and governing entities, remain despite the passage of time. Consequently, it remains evident time does not resolve the trauma, nor does it heal the body from the trauma; rather, the memory of such violence merely festers and persists as it is ready to be seen, heard, and remembered. Whitehead writes, “Most of those who know the story of the rings in the trees are dead by now. The iron is still there. Rusty. Deep in the heartwood. Testifying to anyone who cares to listen” (114). The body’s (re)memory of the trauma is not bound to life but continues in death across time and space as seen in the narrative of Elwood and Griff through the usage of not only narratorial devises but also forensic evidence. By situating the historical with the fictional, readers and scholars can traverse across boundaries uncovering and addressing the traumas bringing about awareness for both the survivors and for those who did not make it out of the Dozier School for Boys.