The Lincoln Highway

After being released from a work farm in 1950s Kansas, where 18-year-old Emmett Watson served an 18-month term for involuntary manslaughter, he hits the road with his little brother, Billy. This is following the foreclosure of their Nebraska farm due to the death of their father.

They leave to escape an angry and agitating towns people who believe Emmett got off easy since he caused the fatal fall of a taunting local boy by punching him in the nose. The whip-smart Billy, who exhibits OCD–like symptoms, advice Emmett to head to San Francisco to reunite with their mother, who left town eight years ago. He was convinced she's there, based on postcards she sent before completely distanced herself from their lives. But when Emmett's prized red Studebaker is "borrowed" by two rambunctious, New York–bound escapees from the juvie facility he just left, Emmett takes after them via freight train with Billy in tow.

Incidentally, Billy befriends a Black veteran named Ulysses who's been riding the rails nonstop since returning home from World War II to find his wife and baby boy gone. A modern picaresque with a host of characters, teasing chapter endings, competing points of view, and wandering narratives, Towles' third novel is even more entertaining than his much acclaimed “A Gentleman in Moscow” (2016).

You can quibble with one or two plot turns, but there's no resisting moments such as Billy's encounter, high up in the Empire State Building in the middle of the night, with professor Abacus Abernathe, whose Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers he's read 24 times. A remarkable blend of sweetness and doom, Towles' novel is packed with revelations about the American myth, the art of storytelling, and the unrelenting pull of history.

An exhilarating ride through Americana.

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021 

ISBN: 978-0-73-522235-9

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Viking

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