The Lincoln Highway: A Novel Paperback – March 21, 2023

The time was June of 1954, the place was a bankrupt farm in rural Nebraska, and the two central characters in this work of fiction were the Watson brothers, Emmett who was eighteen and his little brother Billy, who was eight. Emmett had been serving a sentence at a boy's reformatory for his part in the unintentional death of a local bully, but when his father died of cancer, a decision was made to release Emmett so that he could return home to care for his little brother.Billy had been staying with neighbors awaiting his brother's return, while the bank had been preparing foreclosure documents on the family property. The neighbors were Sally, a nineteen-year-old friend of the Watson's, and her father. Sally was plainspoken to a fault and somewhat resentful of her lot in life - which seemed to be taking care of her father until some other man for her to take care of would come along, but she cared for Billy with the fierceness of a mother hen watching over her only chick.As the story opened, Emmett, who had been serving his sentence on a work farm in Salina, Kansas, was being driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the reformatory. Emmett had plans to pick up his brother, spend a final day or two in the farmhouse, and then head out to Texas with Billy where he would make his fortune buying, remodeling, and selling houses, all financed by the secret nest-egg of three thousand dollars that their father had managed to hide from his creditors at the bank.But Billy had a different plan. He had found a cache of postcards written by their mother just after she abandoned the family several years before - postcards that their father kept secret from the boys. The postmarks and notes on the cards indicated that after their mother left the family she had traveled along the Lincoln Highway, the nation's first transnational paved thoroughfare, headed for California. (The Lincoln Highway ran from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. The Watson's farm was close to the halfway point on the highway.) Emmett had no interest in reconnecting with their mother, but Billy, who was little more than in infant when she left, did. He eventually managed to convince Emmett that California was growing faster than Texas and would be a better prospect for his home renovation plans.All of their plans, however, were thrown into a cocked hat when Duchess and Woolly, two other young men who were serving time at the facility in Salina with Emmett, turned up at the Watson's farm after having stowed away in the trunk of the warden's car just as the warden and Emmett were preparing to leave Salina and head for Nebraska. Duchess was the son of an itinerate vaudeville actor and spent a lot of time growing up on the road and in and around New York City. Woolly was the son of a socially prominent New York family. Duchess, a charming plotter and manipulator, wanted Emmett - who had his own car - to drive them to New York where Woolly would access a pile of cash ($150,000) which his grandfather had set aside for him in the family safe as a "trust fund." If Emmett would drive them, they would split the trust three ways and Emmett would be set for set up to be a major homebuilder in California.Emmett, who regarded himself as far more sensible than the other two former reformatory inmates, declined, but he eventually agreed to go out of his way and take them to the train station in Omaha where the escapees could board a train for New York City. However, while they were enroute to Omaha, Emmett managed to get distracted by another of Duchess's misadventures long enough for Duchess to "borrow" his car - and Duchess and Woolly headed off to New York leaving the Watson brothers stranded in rural Nebraska.Emmett called Sally who came and transported them to the train station in Omaha where Emmett intended to board a train and head to New York City to get his car back, But after Sally left them at the train station, Emmett realized that his money, the nest-egg of $3,000, was still in the trunk of his car under the spare tire. After some careful research, he found an express freight train that was headed to New York City, and he and Billy secreted themselves in a boxcar.And from there Emmett and Billy Watson began a journey which was marked by personal adventures and encounters with characters very reminiscent those experienced by Huck and Jim as they floated down the Mississippi on their raft in a bygone era.The Lincoln Highway is a character-driven tale that is and pulled along through narratives of each major individual in the story. The manner in which it is presented, through the varying viewpoints, enables readers to gain a fuller perspective of what is actually happening, and it adds to the compelling nature of story. The pages, nearly six hundred of them, turn quickly.While The Lincoln Highway, is a very satisfying reading experience, the plotting is far from predictable and it keeps the reader's attention with unexpected twists and turns, much like any drive along an unfamiliar road. It's a book that is hard to put down, and a story that is difficult to quit. While The Lincoln Highway almost begs a sequel, I hope that does not happen because a furtherance of this tale would only serve to dilute its magnificent impact.This is a wonderful story, Mr. Towles. Your countless accolades are well deserved!

This book wasn’t what I expected, and that’s a good thing. I like surprises. The characters are very individualized and three-dimensional. The story had twists and turns, and by the end you realize there are deeper meanings to it. I found myself relating to the characters in different ways. 18-year old Emmett has lost his father, his mother, and then his father’s farm, all while dealing with having just been released from a juvenile work farm for unintentionally killing another boy in a fight. Now he has to make a plan for himself and his 10-year old brother, Billy, to make a new life together. But Emmett’s well-laid plans to travel the Lincoln Highway from Nebraska to San Francisco to start that new life are thrown into chaos by the unexpected appearance of two other boys his age, Duchess and Wooly, both of whom had been at the work farm with him and escaped. Duchess is mercurial and chaotic, though often well-meaning, and Wooly is intellectually challenged, but kind. Along the way, the four boys come to meet some other notable characters who sometimes help them and sometimes challenge them.There are some almost-spoilers below, so stop here if you worry about it….The name of the book is a bit misleading. The Lincoln Highway is really a “McGuffin” in that it triggers the plot but isn’t actually the planned route they ultimately follow. I didn’t mind that, but it did break the “contract with the reader” if you will, from the initial plan that was laid out early in the book. Really, the plot is driven by Duchess, a troubled boy who has his own motivations, which he justifies in different ways, that throws everyone else’s plans asunder. Frankly, all of the characters have tragic histories, which makes them very interesting. Another oddity about this book is that it starts sort of in the middle of the story (which is actually a plot point stated by Billy, who is obsessed with a book about heroes and their journeys), and at the end of the book you realize that the story hasn’t really ended for some of the characters yet. None of these things really take away from the quality of the story, it’s just something to note that sets this book apart from others and makes it unique. I will say, though, that Duchess was so much the driver of the story that all the other characters were a little weaker for it, where they were mostly reacting to Duchess in one way or another.One thing I definitely did not like, though, was that the dialogue is written without quotation marks. Rather, Towles uses a dash to signify when a speaker has started dialogue, but nothing to signify when they stop the dialogue. Thus, it was occasionally confusing when they stopped and the prose began. Towles also needed more dialogue tags, as sometimes I was confused who was speaking which sentences.Be prepared that this has a bit of a tragic ending that left me concerned for the motives of some of the characters I’d come to like. But overall, it was a worthy read.