One of the conceits of The Lincoln Highway is a fictional book-within-a-book that the precocious Billy has read dozens of times and carries with him on the journey to New York City. Meanwhile, traveling across the country in a boxcar, Emmett and Billy have some extraordinary adventures of their own, encountering an evil preacher and a good but sad man named Ulysses who has spent nearly a decade riding the trains alone, heartbroken because his wife and son left him after he went to fight in World War II. (The car has a fairly adventurous 10 days of its own, as it is nearly taken by a banker at the outset of the novel to settle Emmett’s father’s debts and then later is stolen/borrowed, gifted, re-gifted, and finally painted a new color to avoid detection by police.) At one point, Emmett and Billy are forced to travel by freight train after Duchess and Woolly take off with Emmett’s prized 1948 Studebaker Land Cruiser. The manipulative Duchess steers the youths toward New York to settle some personal scores and to help his gentle friend Woolly get his hands on a sizable inheritance locked in a safe at a family home in the Adirondacks. (The theme of moral accounting-performing acts of penance and “settling accounts” to balance the scales of justice-runs through the novel.)

Each of the major characters has a complex backstory, unique motivations, and his own interpretation of honor, justice, what is owed to us, and what, in turn, we owe to others. Towles commented recently that his favorite novels to read are “well written, rich and multilayered,” and The Lincoln Highway, like his superb two previous novels, Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow, fits the description nicely. The entire novel takes place over just 10 days in June of 1954, but they are a busy 10 days for Emmett, Billy, and the two colorful escapees, Duchess and Woolly. When the warden drives Emmett home, two friends from the work farm hide in the trunk of the warden’s car and show up at Emmett’s door to take him on an adventure in the opposite direction, to New York City.Īmor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway is part road novel and part Homeric epic, and it’s a magical piece of masterly storytelling.

What’s more, the relatives and friends of the boy whom Emmett had punched and accidentally killed (after being provoked) are out for revenge.Įmmett hopes to head with his 8-year-old brother, Billy, from their home in Nebraska to a new life in California, but, as they say, fate has other plans for him.

His mother abandoned the family years ago, his father recently died, and the bank is foreclosing on their farm. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (Viking)Įighteen-year-old Emmett Watson, just released from a juvenile work farm where he served 15 months for involuntary manslaughter, doesn’t have much to come home to.

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