book review the lincoln highway

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With four kids in an old studebaker, amor towles takes readers on a real joyride.

Heller McAlpin

The Lincoln Highway is a joyride. Amor Towles ' new Great American Road Novel tails four boys — three 18-year-olds who met in a juvenile reformatory, plus a brainy 8-year-old — as they set out from Nebraska in June, 1954, in an old Studebaker in pursuit of a better future. If this book were set today, their constant detours and U-turns would send GPS into paroxysms of navigational recalculations. But hitch onto this delightful tour de force and you'll be pulled straight through to the end, helpless against the inventive exuberance of Towles' storytelling.

Like his first two novels, The Lincoln Highway is elegantly constructed and compulsively readable. Again, one of the ideas Towles explores is how evil can be offset by decency and kindness on any rung of the socio-economic ladder. His first novel, Rules of Civility (2011), set among social strivers in New York City in 1936, took its inspiration from F. Scott Fitzgerald and its title from George Washington's Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation . His much-loved second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), incorporated nods toward the great Russian writers and shades of Eloise at the Plaza and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel . Mostly confined to a single setting — Moscow's luxurious Metropol Hotel — it spanned 32 years under Stalin's grim rule.

Towles' new novel ranges further geographically — from Nebraska's farmland to New York's Adirondacks by way of some of New York City's iconic sites — but its action-packed plot is compressed into just 10 days. The Lincoln Highway, which owes a debt to Huckleberry Finn, revisits American myths with a mix of warm-hearted humor and occasional outbursts of physical violence and malevolence that recall E.L. Doctorow's work, including Ragtime .

The novel begins on June 12, 1954 and ends on the same date, clearly not coincidentally, as A Gentleman in Moscow . When we meet him, Towles' latest hero, Emmett Watson, has been released a few months early from detention in consideration of his father's death, the foreclosure of the family farm, and his responsibility for his 8-year-old brother, Billy. (Billy has been ably taken care of by a neighbor's hard-working daughter, Sally, during Emmett's absence; she's another terrific character.) The kindly warden who drives Emmett home reminds him that what sent him to the Kansas reformatory was "the ugly side of chance," but now he's paid his debt to society and has his whole life ahead of him.

Shortly after the warden drives off, two fellow inmates turn up, stowaways from the warden's trunk — trouble-maker Duchess and his hapless but sweet protegé, Woolly. (In another fun connection for Towles nerds, naïve trust funder Wallace "Woolly" Wolcott Martin is the nephew of Wallace Wolcott from Rules of Civility. )

Eagerness to discover what landed these three disparate musketeers in custody is one of many things that keeps us turning pages. Expectations are repeatedly upended. One takeaway is that a single wrong turn can set you off course for years — though not necessarily irrevocably.

'A Gentleman In Moscow' Is A Grand Hotel Adventure

Author Interviews

Idea for 'gentleman in moscow' came from many nights in luxury hotels.

The Lincoln Highway is, among other things, about the act of storytelling and mythmaking. The novel probes questions about how to structure a narrative and where to start; its chapters count down from Ten to One as they build to a knockout climax. Towles' intricately plotted tale is underpinned by young Billy's obsession with a big red alphabetical compendium of 26 heroes and adventurers — both mythical and real — from Achilles to Zorro, though the letter Y is left blank for You (the reader) to record your own intrepid quest.

Billy is determined to follow the Lincoln Highway west to San Francisco, where he hopes to find his mother, who abandoned her family when he was a baby and Emmett was 8. (The number 8 figures repeatedly, a reflection of the travelers' — and life's — roundabout, recursive route.) Whether riding boxcars or "borrowed" cars, Towles' characters are constantly diverted by one life-threatening adventure after another — offering Billy plenty of material for a rousing Chapter Y, once he figures out where to begin. One thing smart Billy comes to realize: He belongs to a long tradition of sidekicks who come to save the day.

"Most of us shell our days like peanuts. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement," Towles wrote in his first novel. Of course, Towles is drawn to that one in a thousand. His interest is in those whose zeal has not yet been tamped down by what Duchess (the only first-person narrator) describes, with improbable flair for a poorly-educated 18-year-old, as "the thumb of reality on that spot in the soul from which youthful enthusiasm springs." With the exception of Woolly, the teenagers in this novel are remarkably mature by today's standards, and burdened by cares. But at any age, it's the young-at-heart who are most open to amazement — people like Woolly, who may not be cut out for this world but who can appreciate what he calls a "one-of-a-kind of day."

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.

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THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY

by Amor Towles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 5, 2021

An exhilarating ride through Americana.

Newly released from a work farm in 1950s Kansas, where he served 18 months for involuntary manslaughter, 18-year-old Emmett Watson hits the road with his little brother, Billy, following the death of their father and the foreclosure of their Nebraska farm.

They leave to escape angry townspeople who believe Emmett got off easy, having caused the fatal fall of a taunting local boy by punching him in the nose. The whip-smart Billy, who exhibits OCD–like symptoms, convinces Emmett to drive them to San Francisco to reunite with their mother, who left town eight years ago. He insists she's there, based on postcards she sent before completely disappearing 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. 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, competing points of view, wandering narratives, and teasing chapter endings, 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.

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-73-522235-9

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: June 21, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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PERSPECTIVES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

BOOK TO SCREEN

SEEN & HEARD

THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE

by Matt Haig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2024

Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.

A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.

In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024

ISBN: 9780593489277

Page Count: 368

Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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by Matt Haig

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How Amor Towles’ quintessential American road trip novel interrogates itself

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On the Shelf

The Lincoln Highway

By Amor Towles Viking: 592 pages, $30 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

“Well, that’s life in a nutshell, ain’t it,” says Duchess, recently escaped from a boys’ detention center in Salina, Kan., and recently arrived at his friend Emmett’s Nebraska farm. “Lovin’ to go to one place and havin’ to go to another.”

Duchess, the felonious foil to law-abiding Emmett, does not open Amor Towles’ new novel, “ The Lincoln Highway ,” with those words. But they capture the essence of this old-fashioned, meandering tale of two orphaned brothers in the 1950s and their journey in search of a future.

Not much links this novel with Towles’ other work — “ Rules of Civility ” and “ A Gentleman in Moscow ,” two books that also have little in common except their historicity and their popularity. Here the author has chosen that most American of icons for his title and plot: a famous highway , dedicated in 1913, that not only spans the vast country from east to west but is named for the president who united its north and south. That’s a wide load of metaphor for any book to bear, even one nearly 600 pages long.

Still, like the infrastructure we once built and reliably maintained, “The Lincoln Highway” bears its weight easily — and Towles never pushes things too far. Honest Abe makes an appearance as a statue in a park, but readers must make some connections for themselves instead of having them thrust textually upon them.

Eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson, who spent nearly a year behind Salina’s hard walls before being released, wants more than anything to get home to Morgen, Neb., and his 8-year-old brother, Billy. He knows their mother has vanished, and he isn’t surprised to find their profligate father has died after running the farm into the ground. Only their neighbor Sally, who nurses more than a crush on Emmett, arrives to help, bearing a chicken casserole and a jar of her strawberry preserves and having already stocked the refrigerator with perishables.

Amor Towles: A gentleman in New York

In the last month, Amor Towles says, he’s been getting notes from readers.

Dec. 21, 2016

In the garage, Emmett finds what’s most important to him, after Billy: His 1948 Studebaker Land Cruiser. He has sensible plans to take Billy to Texas, where he can start buying modest houses and flipping them until he’s amassed enough real estate to set them up on firm financial ground.

Billy has other plans. He functions as the deus ex machina of the book; not only does he set events in motion, he also has an almost magical ability to pull just the right story out for the strangers he meets along the way — mainly from “Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers” — a gift from the Morgen town librarian.

The book-within-the-novel is both a convenient source of nested tales and a thematic vector, indicating Towles’ commitment to wrestling with classic Americana — that braid of fact, fiction and derring-do so many of us recognize as a birthright, for better or worse. Billy’s own corn-fed idealism leavens the sometimes-bleak travails along our heroes’ journey.

Just as Billy convinces Emmett they should take the titular highway to San Francisco and find their absent mother, enter Duchess and his comrade Woolly, unannounced and unwanted. They stowed away in the trunk of the car that brought Emmett home.

You can almost guess what’s going to happen the minute Duchess sets his eyes on the Studebaker. After he and Woolly hit the road in that car, Emmett and Billy hit the rails to catch up with them in New York City. The alternating adventures of these pairs hit many different notes, from chaotic (boys in an orphanage bestowed an unsupervised treat) to frightening (a railway bum calling himself Pastor threatens to throw Billy from the train) to wondrous (Emmett’s first sight of Manhattan). Their travels follow the contours and rhythms, the on- and off-ramps of America’s highways, which send us off wherever we desire to go. Or, more accurately, wherever fortune dictates.

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That notion of American openness, of ever-fractalizing free will, coming up against the fickle realities of fate is the tension that powers Towles’ exciting, entertaining and sometimes implausible picaresque.

At one point, Emmett considers the tall tales in Billy’s beloved Abernathe compendium: “What good could possibly come from mixing the lives of these men with stories of mythical heroes setting sail on fabled waters to battle fantastical beasts? By tossing them together, it seemed to Emmett, Abernathe was encouraging a boy to believe that the great scientific discoverers were not exactly real and the heroes of legend not exactly imagined. That shoulder to shoulder they traveled through the realms of the known and unknown making the most of their intelligence and courage, yes, but also of sorcery and enchantment and the occasional intervention of the gods.”

The Lincoln Highway can take people east and west but not north and south, nor high nor deep. Journeying beyond that single axis requires the alchemy of Abernathe, the infusion of fiction, adventure, myth. In one of the best scenes in this lovely new novel, Billy meets a Black man named Ulysses whose World War II post-traumatic stress disorder has distanced him from both his family and himself. When Billy explains the origins of the name “ Ulysses ” to him, relying again on Professor Abernathe, the man is moved to tears. Stories can bring us back to ourselves, Towles seems to say, if only we are open to receiving their power.

But no story, no matter how powerful, can endow Towles’ Ulysses, a man of color in 1950s America, with the freedom that even the poorest white characters in “The Lincoln Highway” take for granted. Think of Colson Whitehead’s “ The Nickel Boys ,” in which a midcentury reform school is not the launching pad for adventures but a destroyer of lives.

Some stories take us to places we love and places we don’t — or to one destination when we would prefer to reach another. It’s our decision to keep reading, or not. Anyone who follows “The Lincoln Highway” will relish the trip, bearing in mind that there are roads not taken, whether by choice or for the absence of one.

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Patrick is a freelance critic who tweets @TheBookMaven .

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'The Lincoln Highway' was named Amazon's Best Book of 2021— here's why I finished this almost-600-page novel in one weekend

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• Amazon Editors compile an annual list of the best books they read that year .
• In 2021, " The Lincoln Highway " by Amor Towles earned the Best Book of the Year award.
• I devoured this book in one weekend and now understand the heaping praise it received. 

Recently, Amazon named " The Lincoln Highway " its Best Book of 2021 , noting it as a unanimously agreed-upon crowd-favorite amongst its editors, who read and review hundreds of books each year. 

" The Lincoln Highway " is most centrally about Emmett Watson, an 18-year-old boy who has just completed his one-year sentence at a work farm for involuntary manslaughter. Returning home in 1954, he retrieves his younger brother and the two decide to travel west along the Lincoln Highway to California, where they hope to find their mother who ran away many years prior. 

This novel was the Jenna's Book Club pick for October 2021 and has a significant approval rating amongst Goodreads reviewers , with 86% of readers giving it a 4- or 5-star review, leading to its selection as a nominee for Best Historical Fiction Novel in the Goodreads Choice Awards . You may also recognize the author, Amor Towles, from his 2016 historical fiction bestseller " A Gentleman in Moscow ," which was nominated for several past awards as well. 

With all the rave reviews and praise surrounding " The Lincoln Highway ," I grabbed a copy, finished it in one weekend, and finally understood why readers can't stop talking about this book. 

Here are 3 reasons readers love "The Lincoln Highway": 

1. each character is expertly fleshed out and feels like a distinct person..

While many blurbs of this novel focus on Emmett Watson, the book is equally about his kid brother, Billy, and his friends from the work farm, Duchess and Woolly, who stowed away in the car that brought Emmett home. While Emmett and Billy plan to head west, Duchess continually derails the group's plans and draws them to New York in search of a small, stashed fortune.

For most readers, the characters are what makes this novel so great. This story is told over 10 days from multiple points of view, each of which propels the novel forward as we dig deeper and deeper into its protagonists' lives.

2. Amor Towles' poetic writing style enhances the plot.

One of the biggest reasons this novel is so popular is because of Amor Towles' storytelling. The prose is enchanting and enthralling, shifting between moments of comedy and drama. There's something about the writing in this novel that not only reminds us of the classics but begs to be considered a classic in its own right.  

Some of the criticism of this book comes from readers who simply didn't connect with Towles' writing style, which boils down to individual taste; not every book is for everyone. Around a third of the way through the novel, I did start to wonder how the story had gotten so off track from the initial description — until I realized it was intentional. As soon as I decided to trust the author and follow the story wherever it may go, I fell in love with the book and happily got lost in its pages. 

Though this novel sits at nearly 600 pages and more than 16 hours as an audiobook , the time flew by as Towles captivated me with adventure after gripping adventure until I was suddenly at the heart-breaking conclusion of a book I wasn't ready to close. 

3. "The Lincoln Highway" reads like a classic American novel about hope and seeking a fresh start.

Despite the title, this story is barely about the Lincoln Highway. As Emmett and Billy begin to plan their trip west, it's immediately derailed by Duchess and Woolly's appearance. Their hijinx, adventures, and missteps take the boys farther from their intended destination but closer to where they need to be, even if they don't realize it. 

Each memorable character in this novel is on their own unique journey toward a fresh start. Emmett is looking to start over after his sentence, Billy is looking to reunite with his mother after losing his dad, Duchess is looking for riches to start a restaurant, and Woolly is looking to find family in his friendships. But for each of these characters, their pasts follow them throughout the story and prove inescapable, at least in the ways they were hoping they'd be. 

Ultimately, this is a story of hope, centered around young and optimistic characters who are still filled with innocence and determination. Perhaps, as the second pandemic year comes to a close, readers are gravitating towards novels like this one because they especially cherish stories of promise, friendship, and nostalgia right now.

The bottom line

" The Lincoln Highway " is a captivating story that reads like a classic and offers readers a hopeful message as this year comes to a close. It's a great read to pick up if you're looking for a nostalgic adventure and are ready to fall in love with some incredibly fleshed-out characters. 

You can find the rest of Amazon's best books of 2021 here .

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Whenever I come to a new town, I like to get my bearings. I want to understand the layout of the streets and the layout of the people. In some cities this can take you days to accomplish. In Boston, it can take you weeks. In New York, years. The great thing about Morgen, Nebraska, is it only took a few minutes.

The town was laid out in a geometric grid with the courthouse right in the middle. According to the mechanic who’d given me a lift in his tow truck, back in the 1880s the town elders spent a whole week deliberating how best to christen the streets before deciding—with an eye to the future—that the east-west streets would be named for presidents and the north-south streets for trees. As it turned out, they could have settled on seasons and suits because seventy-five years later the town was still only four blocks square.

—Howdy, I said to the two ladies coming in the opposite direction, neither of whom said howdy back.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a certain charm to a town like this. And there’s a certain kind of person who would rather live here than anywhere else—even in the twentieth century. Like a person who wants to make some sense of the world. Living in the big city, rushing around amid all that hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. But in a town this size, when a piano falls out of a window and lands on a fellow’s head, there’s a good chance you’ll know why he deserved it.

[ Return to the review of “The Lincoln Highway.” ]

At any rate, Morgen was the sort of town where when something out of the ordinary happens, a crowd is likely to gather. And sure enough, when I came around the courthouse, there was a semicircle of citizens ready to prove the point. From fifty feet away I could tell they were a representative sample of the local electorate. There were hayseeds in hats, dowagers with handbags, and lads in dungarees. Fast approaching was even a mother with a stroller and a toddler at her side.

Tossing the rest of my ice cream cone in the trash, I walked over to get a closer look. And who did I find at center stage? None other than Emmett Watson—being taunted by some corn-fed kid with a corn-fed grievance.

The people who had gathered to watch seemed excited, at least in a midwestern sort of way. They weren’t shouting or grinning, but they were glad to have happened along at just the right moment. It would be something they could talk about in the barbershop and hair salon for weeks to come.

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Book review: A long and winding tale of life-changing adventures

"The Lincoln Highway"

Author: Amor Towles

Viking, 588 pages, $30

“The Lincoln Highway” is the latest book from award-winning author Amor Towles. This book is unusual in several respects: its length, its format — with multiple points of view/narrators — and its unconventional punctuation. I admit I didn’t dive into the book with lightning speed. Like a fine wine, it needed to breathe a bit in my consciousness.

As the book evolved, I became more and more engaged by the characters’ present experiences and their diverse, life-shaping backstories. Towles’ narrative and prose at first appeared simple. But as the story unfolded, I was intrigued by its unexpected depths and undercurrents. The author’s master hand at work.

The core storyline revolves around three young men who meet in and depart from a juvenile detention facility: Emmett Watson, “Duchess” Hewett and Wooly Martin. The other main character, and travel companion, is Billy, Watson’s highly precocious 8-year-old-brother. “The Lincoln Highway” is a road-trip-buddy book with a myriad of mixed agendas and detours.

The action (and there’s a lot of it) unfolds over a 10-day period, starting in Nebraska and ending in New York state with chunks of it occurring along the eponymous transcontinental Lincoln Highway. Along this journey the group of four split up and reshape much like an amoeba. During periods where the group is in some fashion divided (by the most inventive of circumstances), a cast of supporting characters arrive onstage. Conscious of spoilers and with too many to name, I’ll mention my two favorite supporting characters: a riding-the-rails man named Ulysses and one Professor Abernathe, the author of the “Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers and Other Intrepid Travelers.”

Much like his Greek mythological namesake, Ulysses performs an act of heroism (in a boxcar) and has been wandering for 10 years, yearning for his wife and child. His encounter with Billy is transformative. It leaves him, and the reader, with hope for a long-sought reunion.

The professor is introduced at the start of the story with young Billy obsessively reading from his red-leathered tome to himself and others. Billy’s serendipitous New York City encounter with his beloved author helps the boy fulfill his dreams and has a life-changing impact on the author, too.

In summary, “The Lincoln Highway” follows a long and winding road rife with numerous off and on ramps. The book reads a bit more like 19th or early 20th century literature with more pages to the payoff, but I found the prose, important themes, compelling characters and twists-you-never-saw-coming well worth the investment of time and thought.

Jacksonville author Claudia N. Oltean is currently completing a two-book historical fiction series set during Prohibition/The Roaring ’20s.

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You’re Invited on an Everlasting Adventure: Amor Towles’s Latest Novel

Review: ‘the lincoln highway’ by amor towles.

A popular Christian summer camp uses the motto “everlasting adventure.” What a grand promise for teenagers and young people. In Christ, you will never run out of new beauties and glories to explore. You will never be bored. You will taste eternal and abundant life— everlasting adventure.

Amor Towles’s ( Rules of Civility , A Gentleman in Moscow ) new novel, The Lincoln Highway — its own sort of everlasting adventure—taps into the innate sense of exploration and wonder we have as human beings. In doing so, Towles points readers to the grand adventure we were all created for.

The Lincoln Highway: A Novel

Amor towles.

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.

Beginning the Adventure

The story begins as Emmett Watson, an 18-year-old from a small town in Nebraska, returns from a juvenile work camp. It’s June 12, 1954, and he’s just been released early because his father passed away and he needs to care for his 8-year-old brother, Billy. Their mother had left Nebraska for California after Billy was born, and due to their father’s death and the circumstances surrounding Emmett’s stint in Salina, the brothers agree it’s time to pack up and start a new life elsewhere.

Towles points readers to the grand adventure we were all created for.

Emmett intends to go to Texas, but Billy reveals a discovery he made in Emmett’s absence: after leaving Nebraska, their mother had sent eight postcards from eight different spots on the Lincoln Highway—the U.S.’s first cross-country highway. She ended in San Francisco. The brothers would drive there.

Little did they know, two of Emmett’s friends from Salina had snuck in the trunk of the warden who drove Emmett home. Duchess and Wooly sidetracked the road trip—the first of many such distractions. Instead of driving west to San Francisco, they would drive to the Adirondacks to unearth a buried treasure: a $150,000 trust left to Wooly.

Disappointing Adventure

The Lincoln Highway is a true adventure novel, as the four boys traverse the country, coming upon one surprising obstacle after the next, and meeting a full cast of Mark Twainish characters like Pastor John, the derelict preacher who accosts young Billy in a freight car, and Ulysses, the physically imposing, African American, World War II–veteran who has been separated from his family and hopes to be reunited with them after 10 years.

The novel ends on June 21, 1954—the precise date that A Gentleman in Moscow ended. That book spanned 32 years in one location, focusing on one main character; this book spans the eastern half of the United States, focusing on four main characters, in only 10 days. And while this high-stakes, spellbinding, coming-of-age adventure comes to a rapid conclusion, you realize by the end that Towles is inviting you to something more. Billy begins to write his own story and the implication is that we can do the same.

But even as readers will be spellbound, they will be left longing. The great adventure novels end with resolution; The Lincoln Highway ends with tragedy, and the beginning of yet another adventure. Ultimately, adventure—as penned by Towles—is unending, random, and forsaken. Which makes for a good novel, but a disappointing story.

Unending, Random, Forsaken Adventure

The number eight has multiple appearances in The Lincoln Highway. The symbol for infinity turned vertical (8) is the age of Billy Watson. It’s the number of years since Emmett and Billy’s mother left, and the number of postcards she sent on her way to San Francisco. And not only does the novel feel like an unending figure eight at times—with the various characters and their adventures branching off from one another and looping back together repeatedly—the adventures of the characters (save two) are themselves unending in this book. Most stories are left without resolution. The only two conclusions are tragic, and even those, in their own way, don’t quite feel like conclusions.

A companion to the novel’s lack of closure is its randomness. The boys who met at the work camp in Salina were each only there, to some extent, because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Billy is only saved from Pastor John because Ulysses is in the right place at the right time. And the novel’s tragic ending is an accident that could have gone a thousand different ways. A truly post-modern novel, there is no overarching narrative in The Lincoln Highway , only the narratives individuals write for themselves as they pursue their own adventures and bump into fellow travelers along the way.

The novel carries a sense of God-forsakenness. Each character writes his or her own adventure because no one else is writing it for them. In a conversation between Billy and Ulysses—perhaps the two most admirable characters in the novel—we hear about the moment Ulysses took charge of his own adventure. It was the moment he realized he had been forsaken by his Maker. He tells Billy:

If I learned anything in the war, it’s that the point of utter abandonment—the moment at which you realize no one will be coming to your aid, not even your Maker—is the very moment in which you may discover the strength required to carry on. (330)

Billy takes Ulysses’s words to heart, and at key moments in the novel’s remaining pages saves the day by remembering his God-forsakenness and asserting his own agency.

Better Adventure

There is much that is true, good, and beautiful about The Lincoln Highway . Readers will be inspired by the childlike faith of Billy, the kindness of Wooly, and the spiritual depth and wisdom of Sister Agnes. And readers may indeed be inspired to get on with their own adventure, to turn aside from the passiveness and withdrawal so common in our world. At the very least, readers will be compelled by Towles’s uncommon ability to weave together a fascinating tale.

Readers may indeed be inspired to get on with their own adventure, to turn aside from the passiveness and withdrawal so common in our world.

But readers should also note that adventure as it is experienced in this novel—unending, random, and forsaken—is finally unsatisfying and unfulfilling. It might give us a rush for a few days, but it can’t sustain a sense of meaning or purpose. What we need is an adventure with resolution, an adventure that is not random, but according to plan, and an adventure that is not God-forsaken, but God-directed and God-visited. The Christian has just such an adventure.

Indeed, we have been given a task far more rewarding than traveling from one side of the country to the other to collect a trust fund. We’ve been sent out into the world with an eternal trust to invest in all the nations. And we know that one day, Christ will return, and this adventure will be complete. No longer will the detours and distractions and devastating losses along the way frustrate our adventure; we will cross a finish line, and we will finally rest.

As we go along our adventure, we know the apparent chaos we experience is not random. We’re never truly “on the ugly side of chance,” as the kind warden remarked about Emmett. No, God has not left our adventure up to chance. He determined its conclusion from before the foundations of the earth, and every apparent detour we face is ordained by him for the accomplishment of his purposes—for his glory and our good.

Taylor Combs serves as associate publisher of Christian living and leadership books at B&H Publishing Group. He is a graduate of Lipscomb University and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and is pursuing a PhD in historical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his family, along with a core team of families and individuals, are planting King’s Cross Church in their neighborhood in East Nashville in 2022.

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Review: 'The Lincoln Highway,' by Amor Towles

FICTION: Brothers take to the road in the latest novel from Amor Towles.

By Connie Ogle

Amor Towles' follow-up to his bestselling book "A Gentleman in Moscow" arrives on a wave of anticipation, at a time when we long for simpler days. Set in 1950s America, "The Lincoln Highway" is a road novel that celebrates the mythos of an era via a cross-country highway, and it delivers an overwhelming blast of nostalgia that many readers will welcome even if it doesn't add anything new to the genre.

Like the highway, the novel is long, and it winds through adventures in the style of an old-fashioned serial, with an abundance of last-second rescues and romantic philosophizing (about the moral caliber of men who can take a punch, codes of honor and the need to "balance the accounts" in life). The philosophizing does not always spring from the most trustworthy of sources. Still, "The Lincoln Highway" is a romantic novel, not in a passion-and-courtship sense but in its idealization of the era.

The story follows the fortunes of two brothers of a familiar type: strong, silent Emmett and innocent, optimistic Billy. Emmett, 18, has just returned home to Nebraska after serving a sentence at a juvenile work farm (he accidentally killed another boy in a fight). The boys' father is dead, and a neighbor has been caring for Billy.

With the family farm in foreclosure, all that's left for the brothers to do is follow in the footsteps of generations before them: Go West. In California, Emmett hopes to build houses, while Billy believes they will find the mother who abandoned them.

Two escapees from the work farm derail their plan: Woolly, heir of a wealthy New York family; and Duchess, the abandoned son of a traveling actor. Duchess' sociopathic tendencies will present most (though not all) of the novel's conflicts, his actions rerouting the brothers to that other testing ground for dreams: New York City.

Readers hungry for the past will delight in this travelogue's touchstones, which include (but are not limited to) Studebakers, orphans, Phillips 66, foldable road maps, the orange roof atop every Howard Johnson's, Sinatra, homemade preserves, postcards that are not yet vintage but will be, hidden treasure, trains with open boxcars, saintly heroes and dangerous hobos, dutiful but plucky good girls and naughty women with hearts of gold. Don't look for shades of gray; you won't find them. Towles does introduce two intriguing Black characters, but they exist only to serve the brothers' story, which is a shame, since they're both more interesting than stoic, one-dimensional Emmett.

A skeptic might be tempted to view this parade of Americana with a weary eye. Knowing what to make of such a nostalgic surge is hard; social media has sharpened and enhanced our cynicism. But Towles isn't an ironic writer; he's not mocking the American dream. He's reveling in it.

Maybe for the reader, as for Emmett and Billy, the journey is the point. The road is long, after all, and "The Lincoln Highway" ends with unfinished business. What's more American than a sequel?

Connie Ogle is a book critic in Florida.

The Lincoln Highway

By: Amor Towles.

Publisher: Viking, 592 pages, $30.

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The Lincoln Highway (Review, Recap & Full Summary)

By amor towles.

Book review, full book summary and synopsis for The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, a story about four young men journeying from Nebraska to New York City set in 1950's America.

In The Lincoln Highway , eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska in June 1954 by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter.

His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew.

But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

The two-paragraph version: Emmett (18) has just gotten out of juvie and is now planning to drive down the Lincoln Highway to move to San Francisco with his younger brother Billy (8). Billy hopes to find their mother (who left them 8 years ago) there. However, two guys (Duchess and Woolly) have snuck out from juvie and have followed Emmett home, hoping to convince him to help with a caper in New York to take back Woolly's $150K trust fund (which Woolly has been deemed "unfit" to access). When Emmett declines, Duchess "borrows" Emmett's car, forcing Emmet and Billy to stowaway on a train to New York to find Duchess and Woolly and reclaim it. They are aided by Sally, a family friend, and Ulysses, a black man they meet on the train.

Meanwhile, Duchess is also trying to settle some debts against along the way, and he attacks their former warden and other people. When they finally all reach Woolly's grandfather's lakeside house (where the safe with the money is), it turns out Woolly doesn't even know the combination to the safe. Woolly kills himself (which Emmett thinks was his plan all along since he was unhappy and misunderstood by his family), and Emmett and Duchess have a confrontation that turns violent. Ultimately, Billy is able to guess the safe combination, and Emmett puts Duchess (who can't swim) in a leaky boat on the lake with his share of the money. The book ends with Billy, Emmett and Sally heading off to San Francisco, while Duchess drowns trying to save his money from flying away (rather than floating back to safety).

(The book chapters count down from 10 to 1.)

Chapters 10 and 9 open with Emmett Watson (18) returning home to Morgen, Nebraska (dropped off by Warden Williams ) after having spent a year in juvenile detention for killing Jimmy Snyder . Jimmy was a troublemaker who had goaded Emmett into punching him. It caused Jimmy to fall and hit his head on a cinder block, resulting in his death.

In present day, Emmett learns his father's farm is being foreclosed upon by the bank. When Emmett tells his younger brother, Billy (8), that they will need to move, Billy suggests they move to San Francisco. Billy has recently found some old postcards indicating their mother (who left them 8 years ago) once took the journey there down the Lincoln Highway. Billy hopes she might still be living there now. While Emmett thinks his brother's plan of tracking down their mother in California is crazy, he knows that California (due to its high population growth) is a good place for him to pursue his goal of achieving financial stability by renovating and selling houses. After some research, he agrees to the plan.

They're soon interrupted by the presence of Duchess and Woolly , two guys Emmett knows from juvie. Duchess spent a few years in an orphanage, being raised by nuns, after his father abandoned him there for two years when he was 8. Meanwhile, Woolly is a troubled rich kid.

They explain that they stowed away in Warden Williams's trunk and have a proposition for Emmett. Woolly is the beneficiary of a trust fund that should have come under his control now that he's 18. However, his brother-in-law Dennis had him declared "unfit". There's also a wall safe at his great-grandfather's house in upstate New York that contains roughly the same amount of money as his trust fund, $150,000. They want Emmett to go with them to help Woolly get the cash, and in exchange they'll split the money evenly among the three of them. Emmett immediately declines.

The next morning, Sally Ransom , their neighbor and a former romantic interest of Emmett's drops by. She's upset to learn from Duchess that Emmett plans on leaving. In town, Jake Snyder (brother of Jimmy Snyder) accosts Emmett, trying to goad him into a fight and then punching Emmett a few times, though Emmett doesn't fight back.

In Chapters 8 and 7 , they hit the road with the plan of dropping Woolly and Duchess off at the bus stop in Omaha before Emmett and Billy continue on to San Francisco. However, Duchess derails the plan. He asks them to make a pit stop at the orphanage he stayed in for a few years as a child (because his father abandoned him there temporarily). There, he causes a commotion and then drives off with Woolly in Emmett's car (and inadvertently with all of Emmett's money), headed to New York. He promises to be back soon and to give Emmett his share of the cash when they return.

With no money and no mode of transportation, Emmett and Billy hitch a ride on a train to go to New York to track down Duchess and Woolly. On the train, Billy nearly gets his silver coin collection stolen from him by a fake pastor, "Pastor" John , but Pastor John is stopped by Ulysses -- a black WWII vet who is also hitching a ride on the train. Ulysses is a seasoned boxcar traveler, who has been iterant ever since he returned from the war to learn that his wife left him.

Billy gets to know Ulysses, and he tells Ulysses the legend of the Greek hero Ulysses. Billy has been reading an abridged version of from a big red book authored by someone named Professor Abacus Abernathe . The book features a number of great travelers and adventurers, both real and fictional.

Meanwhile, Duchess and Woolly have driven as far as Illinois by now. Duchess plans to start a new life after all of this and wants to clear out any debts he owes or owed to him before he does. They make a quick stop at the house of the retired former warden, Ackerly , who used to beat them. Duchess hits him on the head with a cast-iron skillet and leaves, noting that Ackerly's debt to him has been paid.

In Chapters 6 and 5 , they all make their way to New York. Duchess's goes looking for his father ( Harry ), who is trying to evade him after learning that Duchess escaped from juvie. Duchess finds Fitzy FitzWilliams , an old friend of Harry. We learn that when Duchess was 16, he framed by Harry for a number of thefts in the hotel they were living in (which Harry had actually committed). Fitzy lied in a statement to corroborate Harry's lie. In present day, Duchess guilts Fitzy into giving him Harry's current address in Syracuse.

Afterwards, Duchess goes to visit Townhouse, who was released from Salina a while ago. He wants to settle accounts with him, since Duchess owes Townhouse for having gotten Townhouse in trouble once. The two get squared away, and before Duchess leaves, he impulsively gives Townhouse's cousin Maurice the keys to Emmett's Studebaker (he thinks of it as a good deed that he's doing).

Elsewhere, Ulysses takes Billy and Emmett to a vagrant camp where they can stay for the night. Emmett goes into the city to track down Duchess, who knows is looking for his father. He gets Harry's former address from his agency. It leads him to Fitzy, who tells him about Duchess's past and also gives him Harry's Syracuse address.

Meanwhile, Woolly visits his sister Sarah who says that she has talked to Warden Williams, who is offering Woolly minimal consequences if he returns to juvie immediately. And back at that camp, Ulysses and Billy are attacked by Pastor John. However, Ulysses kills him and drops his body into the river.

In Chapters 4 and 3 , Emmett goes to visit Townhouse, who warns that the police recently came by looking for Duchess. He thinks it's about something more serious than Duchess's escape from Salina. He also returns Emmett's Studebaker to him, and his friends offer to repaint it since the police seem to have associated as blue Studebaker with whatever crime Duchess committed. Townhouse then directs Emmett to where Duchess will be that night, which turns out to be a raunchy circus show attached to a brothel. Emmett confronts Duchess and tries to get him to leave. However, Duchess drugs Emmett, leaves him at the brothel and ducks out.

Before heading to Sarah's place, the group passes by the location described in Billy's big red book as the offices of Professor Abacus Abernathe. They go to visit him and see that he's a real person. Billy tells Abacus about his own adventures. Abacus asks to meet Ulysses, and the two become acquainted.

Back at Sarah's place, Emmett eventually shows up. However, because he wasn't able to check in with Sally as he'd promised earlier, Sally ends up heading to New York (after attempting to call them) to check on Emmett and Billy. She arrives soon after Emmett. They all have a delightful dinner, but soon Dennis and Sarah come home. Dennis is furious to learn that Woolly is not at Salina. He demands that Woolly go work for one of his stockbroker friends after he finishes his sentence.

In Chapter 2 , Woolly and Duchess sneak out early and make their way to Woolly's great-grandfather's house in the Adirondacks in order to take the $150K from the safe. However, when they arrive, it turns out Woolly doesn't know the combination (and it never occurred to him there would be one). Then, as Duchess tries to hack open the safe, Woolly takes a bunch of pills and kills himself.

Elsewhere, Abacus thinks about how Billy has reawakened his desire for adventure. He decides to go with Ulysses to travel via boxcar and seek out his own adventure.

In Chapter 1 , Emmett arrives at Woolly's great-grandfather's house to find Woolly dead and Duchess still trying to get the safe open. Emmett and Duchess scuffle, and Emmett knocks Duchess out. (He doesn't kill Duchess because he had made a promise to Billy not to lash out again.) Meanwhile, Billy guesses the safe combination based on something Woolly had said about his great-grandfather loving the 4th of July. They also find Woolly's will, splitting up his $150K trust fund equally between Billy, Emmett and Duchess.

The book ends with Emmett leaving Duchess in a leaky boat with no oars and with his $50K share in cash. As Duchess tries to get to the money before it flies away, he drowns. Meanwhile, Emmett and Billy head for San Francisco. Sally joins them (platonically) so she can start a new life out there as well.

For more detail, see the full Chapter-by-Chapter Summary .

If this summary was useful to you, please consider supporting this site by leaving a tip ( $2 , $3 , or $5 ) or joining the Patreon !

Book Review

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles is a book I’ve really been looking forward to ever since it was announced. Like many people, I really enjoyed his previous novel A Gentleman in Moscow , and I’ve been eager to revisit his writing.

Blue 1948 Studebaker Land Cruiser

The Lincoln Highway is an adventure story through and through. It tells the story of two brothers with a plan to travel down the Lincoln Highway from Nebraska to San Francisco, though their plans quickly get derailed from the onset.

I loved the tone and the atmosphere of this novel. The sense of adventure and knowing that the book has exciting times and surprises in store for you made it easy for me to look forward to what was coming next.

I also appreciated the journey that Towles takes each character on. He slowly reveals their character and backstory in a way that’s surprising and engaging. In general, I appreciated the parts of the characters that were complex and imperfect.

Beyond that, every section of this book feels crafted for a particular purpose, to bring the story forward in a particular way, though you may not realize it at the time. Like in A Gentleman in Moscow , Towles sets up specific plot points early on throughout the story, knowing he plans on revisiting them in a way that feels gratifying when you reach the later parts of the book.

Some Criticisms

That said, I didn’t fall in love with this book the way I was hoping to. In terms of the main character, Emmett felt a little vanilla at times to me, like a very generic leading man. He was easily the most predictable of the characters, which make him the least interesting to me. Meanwhile, while they were certainly less predictable, both Duchess and Woolly were a little much , in that they were too devious or too ridiculous at times. Something about them just felt a little cartoonish to me.

Meanwhile, Billy is the stereotypical precocious and overly-curious kid that movies and books love to cast in their stories. Moreover, the whole idea that Emmett would ever take Billy on this incredibly dangerous trip when there is a perfectly safe and caring place he could stay requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. It made it a lot harder to take this book seriously.

It’s a book that seems to want to feel grand and epic in scope — four adventurers traveling across the United States! — but doesn’t quite get there. The frequent references to things like Shakespeare, Odysseus, and other legendary characters only underscored for me how much smaller and less emotionally-impactful this story feels.

There are definitely moments where this book shines and it seems to capture precisely the fun, adventurous, freewheeling feeling it seems to be going for — but there’s some unevenness to it. Mixed in there are equal stretches of text when the story drags a little and feels a little mundane.

Read it or Skip it?

If you’re someone who loves a good adventure or a journey à la The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or something of that vein, The Lincoln Highway will probably be right up your ally. For the most part, it really captures that excitement of not knowing who they’ll come across next or what hijinks the various characters will get up to.

However, as I said before, I liked it, but I didn’t love it. While there was a fun sense of adventure, the story didn’t feel as epic as it seemed to be trying to be, and it didn’t seem to have a strong emotional pull to make me fall in love with it. It’s a long book that’s worth the time and effort, but it also often feels long as you’re reading it, if you know what I mean.

I think most book clubs could enjoy this though. Like I said, there’s plenty of discovery, adventure and fun hijinks in store if you decide to read it!

The Lincoln Highway Audiobook Review

Narrated by : Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland & Dion Graham Length : 16 hours 38 minutes

I found the audiobook for The Lincoln High to perfectly serviceable and easy to listen to. The narrators all speak in a crisp, soothing well-paced manner.

There wasn’t anything about it that particular stood out to me, but if you’re interested in this story anyway, this audiobook is a great option.

Hear a sample of The Lincoln Highway audiobook on Libro.fm.

Discussion Questions

• How would you describe Emmett and Billy’s personalities? Why do you they are similar or different?
• What do you think about Emmett’s attitude toward Sally? What do you think of her expectations of him and what he seems to think her expectations are?
• What did you think of Emmett’s relationships with his father and mother? Do you think they were good parents to Emmett and do you think they were good people?
• What did you think of the side characters like Ulysses, Sally, Sarah or Professor Abernathe? Whose story interested you the most and why?
• Emmett is conscientious about wanting to protect his brother from questionable activities and less savory elements of life, but Billy seems to romanticize these things. What do you think about the decisions he makes?
• What did you think of the character of Billy? Did you find him believable as a character? Do you think you were similar to him as a kid?
• Why do you think the characters in the book are so concerned with settling debts and dealing with their obligations?
• What did you think of the character of Woolly? Do you think things could have turned out differently for him? What do you think would have needed to happen for his life to turn out differently? Why do you think Woolly is so fixated on avoiding a every-day-kind-of-day? Why do you think Woolly does what he does at the end of the book?
• Do you think Duchess is a good or bad person at heart? Do you think he could have been redeemed? Why do you think his story ended the way it did?
• Why do you think Sally decides to go to San Francisco? What do you think will happen to her father
• What do you think happens after the characters end up in San Francisco? Were you happy with the way the story ended?

Book Excerpt

Read the first pages of The Lincoln Highway

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In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew.

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Share your thoughts cancel reply.

Lincoln Highway had literary touches similar to A Gentleman in Moscow especially when it diverged to secondary characters. In describing Lincoln Highway to others, it is a modern day Huckleberry Finn/The Wizard of Oz adventure….not on the Mississippi but instead, on America’s oldest highway. While the characters are rendered flawed and at the same time lovable…even Duchess who caused so much havoc along the way. It is Woolly and Billy, each on the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum, who are endowed with a unique sense of insight and prove true goodness. Now, Duchess’ ultimate undoing really bothered me in that, while well deserved, nonetheless proved Emmett really hadn’t “learned his lesson.”

9. My optimistic view on the ending: consider that this is Billy’s book, and everything in it was either witnessed by him or told to him by someone else, or made up. He could not know that Duchess drowned, because he and Emmett drove away in the car. If they were still there, they would have rescued him. So either they were not there, or they did rescue him after he went in the water.

If Billy was not there, then he made up the last bit to 1) fit his hero/morality story agenda about how heroes and anti-heroes die from their one weakness (here greed); and 2) to protect Duchess (and themselves) from the police by telling a made-up story about Duchess’s death, when really he got away with the money, as did Billy and his brother.

After reading Gentle in Moscow, I thought, so what. The story left me cold. I am one third through Lincoln Highway and find myself skipping through the wordiness to get to some point. Don’t think I will persist as I have other books calling me. The book needs a serious edit, taking out all the verbs to be to begin with. One wonders how this writer sells so many books as I don’t think he is a good writer.

My adult daughter and I absolutely loved this book! We finished it in 3 days because we could not put it down. We loved how it was written and cannot wait to read another of his books.

I agree with you about the book. Besides what you wrote, I was also dissatisfied with the ending. I didn’t really understand why Woolly committed suicide. And I didn’t really understand why Emmett set Duchess afloat like that. It seemed too mean for Emmett’s character. Also, Duchess could have just been patient and waited until the wind died on the lake. His emotion and desire for the money overcame his good sense. That was clear; but the Duchess I had come to know in the earlier chapters would have had more sense. Could you comment, please?

In my opinion Wolly committed suicide because he felt he had no other choice. There was clearly something wrong with him mentally and with the book set in the 1950’s there was not much available to him. He didn’t want to keep “fighting” for his life to get better he wanted to go back and revisit the place he was the happiest. Plus the only person in his life that seemed to care was Sarah. It was sad, but I understand that feeling of hopelessness!

I enjoyed the novel but there is one plot device which I found completely implausible. When Emmett realizes Duchess has stolen his car it does not occur to him to call the police and even more unbelievable is that he thinks he and Billy can take a freight train to NY city and there find Duchess and his car. Did he think he and Billy would just stroll around the sidewalks of NY and just by a stroke of luck find Duchess who would then be happy to return the stolen car and the money hidden in it? He is depicted as a smart level headed person so it is hard to believe he could be that naive.

Emmett did not put Duchess in the boat with a hole in it and a promise to Billy not to hurt Duchess any more than he had, so Emmett puts Duchess in the caddie. So who put Duchess in the boat. Well it certainly wasn’t Billy, so that leaves only one person left

Two mistakes/typos in Chapter 1 of this summary.

It is Duchess (NOT Woolly) who is still trying to get the safe open when Emmett arrives at Woolly’s great-grandfather’s house.

The book ends with Emmett leaving Duchess in a leaky boat with no oars (NOT no oaks).

Are the copy editors leaving all their work up to spell-check?

Barb, I didn’t catch those mistakes but a couple things bugged me. The fire that Wooly set at his private school might have burned down the goalpost but it would have been the old style goalpost shaped like an ‘H’, not the kind used today with one post in the ground. When talking about Sally’s truck it’s mentioned that she put something in the back seat but farm trucks in the early fifties didn’t have ‘crewcabs’. Also found it funny that the sheriff, when taking Emmet home, asks if he can smoke in the Studebaker. I think that at that time it was assumed one could smoke anywhere.

Don’t know why I see things like this as it doesn’t really matter but, hey, why not mention it.

Woolly, was my favorite character. Rules of Civility his first book gives reference to Woolly.

I didn’t like the way the book ended at all. Did Duchess really deserve this? I also wasn’t fond of how the author switches back and forth. He leaves one chapter as a cliff hanger and then proceeds onto the next character. I read it because I was determined to finish what I started but would not read it again.

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Book review: Amor Towles' novel, 'The Lincoln Highway' takes readers on a surprising journey

For fans of “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “Rules of Civility,” the great news this fall is that Amor Towles has a new book. This one is completely different and yet just as compelling as the previous two. 

In “The Lincoln Highway” Towles follows three teenage boys and an 8-year-old as they travel along the Lincoln Highway from Morgen, Nebraska, to Manhattan in 1954.

Emmett Watson, just released from a juvenile boys detention camp, has returned to Nebraska to find that his family’s farm has been foreclosed on. His father has died and his mother long-ago abandoned the family. Billy, Emmett’s little brother who was an infant when their mother left, has decided they should follow her trail of postcards and try to find her in San Francisco.

As the boys are about to depart in the only possession Emmett has left — a powder-blue Studebaker — who should show up but Duchess and Woolly, escapees from the same juvenile camp from which Emmett was released.

Through trickery, Duchess commandeers the road trip and sends it on an alternate eastern course (though still on the Lincoln Highway) to New York where Woolly can claim his trust fund and make the quartet of boys — called the Four Musketeers to Billy’s delight — rich. 

More: Columbus author and poet Hanif Abdurraqib named a MacArthur Fellow

The story unfolds over a mere 10 days. Duchess, accompanied by the sweet, unworldly Woolly, hijacks the Studebaker, leaving Emmett and Billy no recourse but to ride the rails to track them down and secure the car. 

Along the way, they all meet a variety of characters — some of them very Mark-Twain-like: the sinister, self-styled preacher Pastor John; a third-rate vaudeville performer named Fitzy FitzWilliams; Charity, Ma Belle and other ladies of a seedy brothel; and a noble Black World War II veteran named Ulysses.

Billy is particularly enamored of this last character because in his backpack, Billy carries a beloved book: “Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventures, and Other Intrepid Travelers” that tells the stories of among others, King Arthur, Robin Hood, Hercules and Ulysses. 

More: Pop-culture obsession led 'Black Nerd Problems' founders to launch a website, write a book

Towles is a consummate storyteller, departing often but briefly from the road trip to deliver tales of his numerous other characters. Because Emmett, Duchess and Woolly had been together in the juvenile camp before the novel begins, there are plenty of stories from their time there as well as each of their family histories. 

Each main character is unique. Emmett is determined, stalwart, reserved. Billy is precocious but naive. Woolly, the failed son of a wealthy and aristocratic New York family, is otherworldly but kind. Duchess is the most complicated of the bunch: he’s charismatic, selfish, tricky and the engine that drives the tumult. A friend of Emmett’s from the detention camp describes him as a “loyal friend in his own crazy way,” an entertaining (expletive) slinger, a “guy born with no peripheral vision.”

The dupery of Duchess drives “The Lincoln Highway” to surprises along the way and to the stunner of the book’s finale.

Towles’ new novel is a rollicking, propulsive and alternately humorous and heartbreaking adventure filled with indelible, haunting characters. 

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the lincoln highway.

From HUCKLEBERRY FINN to ON THE ROAD, the road novel has a long and vibrant pedigree in American literature. Amor Towles, author of RULES OF CIVILITY and A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW, has decided to make his own contribution to that genre in his third novel, THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY. The story features an appealing cast of young characters and an ingeniously complicated plot, but doesn’t fully realize its potential as a classic picaresque novel.

Named for the United States’ first transcontinental highway, which begins at 42nd and Broadway in New York’s Times Square and ends in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park, THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY opens far from those terminal points, in a small Nebraska town in 1954. The novel follows the Watson brothers --- 18-year-old Emmett, who has just arrived home from 15 months in a Kansas juvenile reform program, where he was sentenced for his role in the accidental death of another teenager, and eight-year-old Billy. Emmett’s term has been shortened due to the death of his father, and he returns home to find that the local bank has foreclosed on the family farm.

"The story features an appealing cast of young characters and an ingeniously complicated plot... There are ample moments of suspense, humor and even pathos..."

The brothers have no qualms about saying goodbye to the prairie, because each has a dream he hopes to realize on reaching California in Emmett’s 1948 powder blue Studebaker Land Cruiser. Emmett’s involves using the $3,000 in cash his late father concealed from creditors to start a career flipping houses. Billy expects to find their mother and reunite with her at the fireworks display in San Francisco on July 4, the day before the anniversary of the date she abandoned her family, when he was a newborn. Her only contact since that abrupt departure was a series of nine postcards she sent from various points as she journeyed west along the eponymous highway.

But as their trek is about to begin, an obstacle arrives in the form of Duchess and Woolly, friends of Emmett who have decided to grant themselves parole from the same Kansas institution where he was incarcerated, by stowing away in the trunk of the car of the warden who drove Emmett home. The roguish Duchess’s seemingly innocent request to visit the orphanage where he once lived before depositing him and Woolly at the Omaha bus station gives Duchess the opportunity to abscond with Emmett’s car and head for New York. He settles some old scores along the way and seeks to get his hands on a share of the trust fund that Woolly (aka Wallace Wolcott Martin), the scion of a prominent New York family, is to inherit.

This setup only hints at some of the complexity of THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY’s plot. It’s impossible to summarize all of the interactions among these characters and the many twists and turns of Towles’ rococo storytelling over the mere 10 days of the novel’s time span. There are ample moments of suspense, humor and even pathos, as the “four musketeers” --- as Duchess dubs them (later briefly joined by Sally, daughter of the Watson boys’ neighbor) --- make their way east to the New York area. Emmett and Billy hop on and off freight trains in some of the novel’s more perilous scenes, pursuing Duchess and Woolly to retrieve Emmett’s car and resume their journey to the West Coast.

Towles has chosen to tell the story principally from the perspectives of Emmett, Billy, Woolly, Duchess and Sally, the latter two from a first person point of view. In a few instances, the same events are seen from the viewpoints of different characters. Some of these alternating sections are as short as three pages, but as the lengthy (576-page) novel moves along, the frequent shifts from one character to another begin to feel obtrusive more than refreshing.

Of all the novel’s characters, Billy is by far the most endearing. He’s a sweet, trusting boy whose intellect and curiosity far outstrip his tender years. His bible, which he has proudly read 24 times, is entitled Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers, a collection of brief retellings of heroic journeys, among them Homer’s Odyssey. That book figures neatly into the plot when Ulysses, a Black veteran who’s been riding the rails for more than eight years, rescues Billy from a predatory character named Pastor John, a man linked to faith in name only.

Close behind him in engaging the reader’s sympathies is Woolly. Despite his family’s wealth, his life has been irrevocably damaged by the death of his father in World War II. Even though he’s 20 years old, he’s a character of unsurpassed kindness who has a childlike quality about him. There are moments when it’s necessary to remind oneself that Billy is his junior.

THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY fully engages the reader’s sympathies with the Watson brothers and Woolly, and keeps one guessing about the next scheme Duchess will pull from his bag of tricks. This diverting entertainment has its share of daring, amusing and moving moments, but somehow it adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg on October 8, 2021

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

• Publication Date: March 21, 2023
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• ISBN-10: 0735222363
• ISBN-13: 9780735222366

Booklover Book Reviews

The Lincoln Highway, Book Review: Amor Towles’ heroic dogma

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles is filled with characters that charm but international readers may find the anthemic Americana less beguiling. Read my full review.

The Lincoln Highway Book Synopsis

Two brothers venture across 1950s America to New York in the absorbing new novel by the author of the bestselling  A Gentleman in Moscow.

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter.

With his mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett plans to pick up his eight-year-old brother Billy and head to California to start a new life.

But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have stowed away in the trunk of the warden’s car. They have a very different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take the four of them on a fateful journey in the opposite direction – to New York City.

Bursting with life, charm, richly imagined settings and unforgettable characters,  The Lincoln Highway  is an extraordinary journey through 1950s America from the pen of a master storyteller.

( Penguin Books Australia , 2021)

Genre: Literature, Historical, Drama, Adventure

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Book Review

After raving over Amor Towles debut novel Rules of Civility , I was very much looking forward to reading his highly anticipated third novel The Lincoln Highway . It is featured in countless Best Books of 2021 lists, and the Amazon Book Review editors even named this their #1 book of the year .

Towles once again displays his skill and dare I say it, devotion to character development. There were multiple characters and descriptions that charmed me.

You’ve got to love that about Woolly. He’s always running about five minutes late, showing up on the wrong platform with the wrong luggage just as the conversation is pulling out of the station.

But, I think it is worth approaching this chunky 576 page novel with managed expectations – particularly so international readers who like me are less likely to be beguiled by this tale’s anthemic strains of Americana.

Now, I was always going to finish reading The Lincoln Highway because Towles hooks you early on setting off a domino-like series of events with menacing portent. But my expectation that this novel only spanning 10-days in the life of its characters would translate to a fast-paced reading experience was misguided.

Alternating perspectives

The Lincoln Highway narrative is told from alternating character perspectives – a literary construct I typically really enjoy. But I found Towles’ decision to use third-person perspective for some characters and first-person for others perplexing to say the least. I suspect it was something to do with ‘reading about heroes’ and a desire to heighten narrative suspense. But this, the numerous side tales and at times laboured moral messaging broke my reading spell on many occasions.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

I would describe The Lincoln Highway ‘s conclusion as thought-provoking and worthy of interrogation, rather than satisfying. I am a big believer in karma, but this brand of casual fatalism and eye-for-an-eye dogma was just a little hard for me to swallow.

In The Lincoln Highway Amor Towles once again delivers characters that charm. That is his enviable talent. But, whether readers are ‘swept away’ by their story, I think rests heavily on personal experience and philosophical outlook.

BOOK RATING: The Story 3.5 / 5 ; The Writing 4 / 5 – Overall 3.75

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More The Lincoln Highway reviews

‘ The Lincoln Highway  is a joyride… delightful tour de force .. There’s so much to enjoy in this generous novel packed with fantastic characters’ – NPR.org

‘Towles’ third novel is even more entertaining than his much-acclaimed  A Gentleman in Moscow  (2016)… 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.’ – Kirkus Starred Review

‘With its down-home style and ideas about the lone hero, The Lincoln Highway is pure Americana. Reading it in any other country is like taking a vacation in the Land of the Free: a long, easy, enjoyable if at times hokey ride on a highway filled with adventure.’ – The Guardian

About the Author, Amor Towles

Amor Towles was born and raised in the Boston area. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University. An investment professional for over twenty years, he now devotes himself full time to writing. Towles lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children. Check out his website or connect with him on Twitter .

* My receipt of a review copy from the publisher did not impact the expression of my honest opinions above.

A booklover with diverse reading interests, who has been reviewing books and sharing her views and opinions on this website and others since 2009.

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The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

• Publication Date: March 21, 2023
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• ISBN-10: 0735222363
• ISBN-13: 9780735222366
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What readers think of The Lincoln Highway, plus links to write your own review.

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The Lincoln Highway

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• Oct 5, 2021, 592 pages
• Mar 2023, 592 pages

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The Lincoln Highway: Let’s Talk About That Ending! (Spoilers)

This is a spoiler-filled discussion about the ending to The Lincoln Highway . If you haven’t read the novel yet, wait to visit this post until after you finished it.

Welcome to the discussion about The Lincoln Highway ! If you’re new to Book Club Chat, I write spoiler-free reviews and spoiler-filled book club questions for each novel I read. But lately, I’ve noticed some books deserve a third article—one dedicated to shocking endings. So please feel free to comment with your thoughts at the end of the article.

The Lincoln Highwa y is a coming-of-age tale about the transition from teenager to adulthood. Each of the main characters are at a crossroads of sorts and in a way, the Lincoln Highway serves as a getaway from their current, somewhat bleak situation.

Particularly, Emmett and Billy. This is their chance to leave behind Nebraska and its bad memories and try out California. While Billy hopes they can find their mother in San Fransisco (even though she abandoned the family), Emmett believes they can get a fresh start with fixing and then selling houses (the original house flippers).

But Duchess made a mess of everything. Once he steals Emmett’s car and heads up to New York, it completely delays Emmett’s and Billy’s plans.

From there, we follow Emmett and Billy’s journey to regain the car and they meet an interesting cast of characters along the way.

Remember, this is spoilers, spoilers, spoilers from here on out! So don’t read this unless you’ve finished the book. Seriously!

Up until about the last 60 pages or so, the story is fairly straightforward coming-of-age tale with vivid imagery of the time period and lots of pondering about the past and what’s next. So the shift in tone during the climax to the ending was pretty shocking.

Emmett finds Woolly dead in his bed from a suicide. He’s distraught but when he sees Duchess, all Duchess cares about his trying to get Woolly’s inheritance that is locked away. This horrifies Emmett and he’s determined for Duchess to finally go to the police to own up to his crimes and that’s when the two get into a fight. Eventually, Emmett knocks out Duchess.

It turns out Woolly did leave each of the friends his money. So the brothers take their share of the money and plan to finally go to California.

But Emmett is concerned that Duchess will try and find them. So he decides to put an unconscious Duchess on a boat with his own share of the money. The boat contains a hole and Emmett stacks stones in order to stop the boat from flooding. However, once Duchess is awake and the money begins to blow away, Duchess shifts the boat to try and get it—causing it to sink and since Duchess can’t swim, he drowns.

We apparently see a flash before Duchess dies that shows the brothers in California, Woolly alive, Sally with a child and Sister Sarah. Clearly this doesn’t represent the future since Woolly is alive but maybe that flash was simply Duchess’ wishes. I’m not sure—what do you think about that scene?

While the ending is shocking, there are hints of something more sinister going on earlier in the novel—Duchess’ random act of violence against the taunting cowboy in Morgen and also to Ackerly, the former warren of the juvenile camp. Duchess tries to justify both but it’s undeniable that those were unprovoked actions and the fact he doesn’t see that is pretty disturbing in itself.

And with Emmett, while he did not kill the bully on purpose back in Morgen, it does sound like he has anger issues and only Billy can get him to calm down. Although, who wouldn’t be absolutely furious with Duchess and his behavior, right?

But let’s talk over several key events. First, was this Woolly’s plan all along—to commit suicide and leave his friends his inheritance? I think so. This is why his interactions with his sister seemed to have a farewell component to it. Very sad and tragic.

I have seen people wonder if Duchess had a hand in Woolly’s death—such as ensuring Woolly would get his sister’s medicine bottle (which I don’t think we ever got the name of). So, maybe he didn’t actually kill Woolly but he also didn’t help to prevent the overdose. I think it’s left vague on purpose.

The second event I want to discuss is the fact that Duchess makes it seem like this trip is an effort to get revenge at his father for framing him and sending him to the work camp. But he never does come into contact with his father—although it seems like he does try. I was disappointed they never had an interaction and that really didn’t go anywhere.

Reading the story from Duchess’ first-person perspective caused the reader to try to sympathize with him but soon it became apparent that not only was he a liar but he’s also a dangerous person. While Duchess probably thought of himself as a hero, he was the villain, in the end. I don’t feel he was misunderstood—I believe his actions were loud and clear.

Emmett’s Motivations

And so let’s talk about the big twist—Emmett leaving Duchess in the boat. I’ve reread it a couple times and I don’t believe Emmett purposely killed Duchess. I know some feel that way but I just don’t think that was the author’s intention. I feel Emmett was truly concerned that Duchess would find him and Billy and continue to cause havoc so he had to delay Duchess.

But at the same time, I feel that Emmett didn’t care what happened to Duchess. He knows that Duchess can’t swim and he did just enough to provide some safety but it was up to Duchess to ensure that he could get back to shore. Potentially, Emmett laid the groundwork for Duchess to have to choose between the money or survival. This line Emmett thinks before driving away is significant:

“Having come fifteen hundred miles in the wrong direction, on the verge of traveling three thousand more, Emmett believed that the power within him was new in nature, that no one but he could know what he was capable of, and he only has just begun to know it himself.”

How I take this is after Emmett murdered that bully, he really worked to contain his anger but Duchess’ behavior left him no choice. If Emmett didn’t stop Duchess, Emmett believes that Duchess would again get in the way of their plans. So Emmett will not get pushed around any longer and is willing to do whatever it takes to get him and Billy to safety. So again, while I don’t think Emmett set out to murder Duchess, I also believe he didn’t care what happened to him—he just didn’t want to deal with his toxic behavior any longer.

Tell Me Your Thoughts

This is how I interpreted The Lincoln Highway ending. Agree, disagree and/or have other ideas completely? Be sure to tell me your thoughts below!

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Wednesday 29th of May 2024

I liked the book, but found some of the escapades not realistic. I can not really believe that a young girl (Sally) would leave her home in Nebraska and drive across the country because Emmett had not called her and actually find them. And the scene in the whore House ??? Dutchess was as you rightly point out a bad guy and I did not like him or trust him. But that said, the writing is just wonderful. He s a very good author.

Wednesday 8th of May 2024

As I recall, the 3 arrive at evening and find their dead friend. Thus NONE knew about the 'STRONG afternoon wind' the author explains as Duchess awakens in the boat! I think Emmett thot Duchess, who couldn't swim, with the position of the leaking boat would chose his life NOT the money, but be taught a huge lesson... Remember Emmett was the idol of his very bright little brother so his little brother could see this as a ' life lesson' of not just murdering a person since Duchess would have the power to make a choice... with the money at the other end of the unstable boat. However, fate took over the ending with the strong wind ...as the money blew away and hard as he tried, Duchess could not make it back to shore loosing both....

Monday 1st of January 2024

I just finished this book and felt the urge to look up a discussion about the ending because I just couldn’t let the thoughts keep swirling around in my head! This group has brought up some very thought-provoking points. While I do agree that Duchess was ultimately the villain, a part of me feels very sorry for him. His father (the ultimate ultimate villain) failed to provide him with the basic education to ensure his success in this world, namely reading and swimming. As an illiterate, I’m sure that behind the charm and violence was a deep seated fear of how he would make it in the world. He had no family and no traditional education. As I think about it, though, I suppose he could have applied himself to become a great chef or something. It just goes to show how deep and rich Towles created these characters! I’ll have to read A Gentleman in Moscow.

I thought duchess brought in Fitzwilly to play Billy's famous author...so I guess I was rooting for dutchess to be a better perso

Rita Lacerda

Wednesday 15th of November 2023

I had to find people to discuss this ending, so glad I came across this site! My oh my, what a twist! It's like it turned into a whole new book. I was already loving it and with an hour to go on my audiobook, I was bracing myself for a happy ending, or at least something more about the boys' mum or Duchess' dad. And then the shock of where it went. I was listening while driving and my eyes teared up at Whooly's death. I was very conflicted about Duchess' as well. It felt unavoidable given his character, but completely avoidable if he had Emmett's. Emmett would've been sensible and saved his life and whatever money was left, which is why I choose to believe he didn't set out to kill Duchess. He might have even made it to shore, repaired the boat and set out again to collect the drifitng notes or something. Emmett also didn't know about the breeze so he could have genuinely assumed the lake would remain still for as long as it took Duchess to paddle back.

I agree with others who have mentioned Billy is autistic. It was very obvious. But I believe Whooly was too, which explains why they got on so well. Generous to a fault, the way he saw the world, his special interest in Abraham Lincoln, his difference from his family, his unusual collections, the literal interpretations, the naïveté and sense of wonder, all screamed autism to me. I don't think he was contemplating suicide the whole time. For me, it was the conversation with his brother-in-law that was the tipping point. The whole thing about him having to get a job and start becoming a man, it was too much to face. He realised he would never be free of the world's and his family's expectations of him. He drops his hope to see the Statue of Liberty, which struck me as odd at the time, but I hadn't realised he made the plan to end his life, I was still thinking he would start over in California with the others. But a family with that reach and influence, they wouldn't let him go and he probably assumed that would make his friends a target as well. Poor Sarah, to face the death of her beloved brother while pregnant as well. I do agree with Emmett, she would not forgive herself. Regardless of the brown bottle not being linked to the scene.

I feel this book is going to leave me reeling for a long time. I'm off to find a Gentleman in Moscow next. Apparently that's the thing to do!