L is for Lincoln Highway

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—the wily, charismatic Duchess and earnest, offbeat Woolly—have stowed away in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take the four of them on a fateful journey in the opposite direction to the city of New York.

Spanning ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel is a multilayered tale of misadventure and self-discovery, populated by an eclectic cast of characters, from drifters who make their home riding the rails and larger-than-life vaudevillians to the aristocrats of the Upper East Side. An absorbing, exhilarating ride, The Lincoln Highway is a novel as vivid, sweeping, and moving as readers have come to expect from Towles’s work.

I’ve been listening to The Lincoln Highway on my trusty phone…I used to say trusty iPod, but I don’t use that anymore…I have read or listened to two previous books by Amor Towles, ‘The Rules of Civility‘ and ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’, and I really enjoyed them both. I read the first, and listened to the second. I liked ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ so much that after I finished listening to it, I started over and listened to it again. It was really good, really satisfying.

So when I saw his new book at the airport bookstore on our way to Hawaii, I knew I would want to read it. But it is a big book and my eye was being an ass, and I had 2 books packed already, so I forgot about it. Then last week I was catching up with my step-mom on the phone, and she mentioned that she had read it, and loved it so much that she didn’t want it to end. I downloaded the audio book to my phone, and I’ve been listening to it while I walk Mulder and while I cook dinner. It’s really good. I like the characters, I like the story, I hope for the best for some of the characters, and some I would like to slap. Highly recommended.