The Lincoln Highway

 By Amor Towles

Viking 2021

575 pages     Literary

Four boys. One huge adventure. Lots of life lessons learned.

It is 1954. Emmett has been released from a juvenile detention center in Kansas because his little brother, Billy age 8, was left alone following the death of their father. The new warden drives him home to Emmett’s Nebraska farmstead to take responsibility for his brother. Once the warden has gone, Emmett discovers that Woolly and Duchess, two fellow detention-mates, have hidden in the trunk of the warden’s car and are ready for an adventure.

Billy, an extraordinary young child, has two things going for him—he is obsessed with a book of heroes and adventurers, and he has also learned about the Lincoln Highway, which is the first East to West highway in the United States. He wants Emmett to drive West on the highway to San Francisco, where Billy is sure his mother is waiting for them. Their mother left them when Billy was a baby.

Woolly and Duchess have other ideas. They steel Emmett’s Studebaker and travel East to New York, where they are going to find Woolly’s inheritance and Duchess’ erstwhile father, a Shakespearian actor. Thus the adventure begins; Woolly and Duchess by car and Emmett and Billy by boxcar. The reader can’t help to be amazed at how independent and mature these young men are. Emmett is the steady character, while Duchess is the boldest. Billy the intellectual, and Woolly the dreamer.  

The structure of the book, itself, is innovative. It is written in ten sections, with the climax building from section ten to section one, and while section one doesn’t bring about the answers the reader is seeking, it certainly is a dramatic ending.

Every character is marvelously created. I expected that would be the case after having read A Gentleman in Moscow a few years ago. Towles has the ability to see inside the minds of his characters. I especially enjoyed the chapters about Sally, who is a young woman who took care of Billy before Emmett got home. She is a farm girl and a very efficient homemaker, but she is searching for some adventure in her life. She has served others all her teen years, but as she joins the boys on their adventure, she muses: “I thought to myself that there are surely a lot of big things in America. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty are big. But there is nothing bigger than a man’s opinion of himself.” Made me laugh.

There are several other great characters that I could write about including the author of Billy’s book and a traveling man named Ulysses, who bonds with Billy as well as the author of Billy’s book. But primarily, the book is about the adventure. The NPR reviewer closes by saying: “There’s so much to enjoy in this generous novel packed with fantastic characters—male and female, black and white, rich and poor—and filled with digressions, magic tricks, sorry sagas, retributions, and the messy business of balancing accounts. ‘How easily we forget—we in the business of storytelling—that life was the point all along,’ Towles oldest character comments as he heads off on an unexpected adventure. It’s something Towles never forgets.”

When I first began to read The Lincoln Highway for my book club, I was enthusiastic but a bit intimidated by the size of the book. But I reasoned that it had won many awards for a reason, including the fact that it has remained on the bestseller list for weeks and weeks. I soon became completely enthralled with the characters, the settings, the plot, and the humor. It was when I read a question and answer session that appeared on Towles’ website that the book began to make complete sense to me, including its innovative structure.

I was also struck by the title and it’s origin. I didn’t know that there was such a thing as the Lincoln Highway, but when Towles discovered the existence of the Lincoln Highway, I realized that I was not alone, and when I looked at the map, I realized that the Lincoln Highway runs just south of us through the northern part of Indiana. I want a summer adventure to take us from South Bend to Pittsburgh on the highway.

Don’t be intimidated by the size of The Lincoln Highway. You will be so caught up in the adventure and the characters that the pages, like miles, will fly by.