The Lincoln Highway: A Novel

After a bar fight gone wrong in his small Nebraska hometown, Emmett Watson returns home again following a year-long stay at a work farm with some unexpected stowaways in the trunk of his car. Emmett plans to leave Nebraska and journey west with his younger brother to start a new life, but the stowaways––fellow inmates at the work farm––have other ideas. Their journey first takes them east to New York, then to many more unexpected destinations along the way.

The Lincoln Highway is very different from Towles’ previous works, most notably A Gentleman in Moscow. But in this case, different is still good. The Lincoln Highway felt almost like a slapstick comedy at times, with lots of witty observations thrown in throughout the beautiful prose. And though it’s a pretty hefty book, I flew through it because I couldn’t get enough of the characters. Each is deeply flawed, but somehow Towles shows us those qualities while also making them lovable. Along the journey, we not only get these character portraits, but also fascinating snippets of history and homages to both Greek mythology and toys in FAO Schwartz. The Lincoln Highway is certainly a road trip you’ll want to take.