The Lincoln Highway
by Amor Towles
“Wouldn’t it have been wonderful, thought Woolly, if everybody’s life was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one person’s life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else’s. It would just fit snugly in its very own, specially designed spot, and in so doing, would enable the whole intricate picture to become complete.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
I previously enjoyed both The Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow, but Amor Towles has succeeded in surpassing both of those novels with The Lincoln Highway. It is a road story with four young men exploring America and finding themselves. While these four are at the center of the novel it literally explodes with characters, most of whom are fascinating. By the time an older black man named Ulysses arrives on the scene and bonds with young Billy I was hooked and found it hard to put the book down.
In June 1954, the warden of the juvenile work farm where Emmett Watson, then 18 years old, had recently completed a fifteen-month sentence for involuntary homicide, drove him back to Nebraska. Emmett plans to travel to California with his brother Billy, age 8, so they can begin a new life there after losing their mother and father, respectively, and the family farm to bank foreclosure. However, as the warden pulls away, Emmett notices that two of his work farm friends had snuck inside the car's trunk. They have come up with a completely new strategy for Emmett's future, one that will send them all on a perilous voyage in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. The suspense builds as the journeys of the main characters head toward a denouement that is worth the more than five hundred pages it takes to get there.
Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel was more than entertaining with his multi-layered literary styling while providing an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.
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