The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
A good book! It’s the story of two brothers who leave their home in Nebraska to go to California, planning to take the Lincoln Highway to get there. The brothers are named Emmett and Billy Watson. Emmett is 18, Billy 8. Their mother left them soon after Billy’s death and their father, a failed farmer, has just died when the story begins. It begins with Emmett arriving home after being released from a kind of work farm reformatory school after serving time there for having accidentally killed a boy. While Emmett was gone Billy discovered postcards from their mother showing she had gone to San Francisco. Billy wants to go and find her. Emmett wants to start a business. So they decide to take the Lincoln Highway to San Francisco.
Emmett and Billy meet up with two others who served time with Emmett, Duchess and Woolly. Another significant character is Sally, a young woman who was a neighbor in Nebraska. There are other characters, too, and each chapter is headed by the name of which character is either speaking or being written about. I wonder how the author decided when to use first-person and when to tell the story with omniscient details about the thoughts and feelings of the featured character.
You get to know the characters well and it is a joy. Through their chapters, you often hear the action of the same parts of the story from each of their perspectives. Once in a while, I would feel a small jab of aggravation when a chapter ended and the next chapter started with a different character at a different time—it didn’t pick up where the previous chapter ended. However, that little feeling of annoyance ended in just one or two sentences as I was brought into the new character’s story, enmeshed in the grand story happening to all of them.
The characters are funny and intriguing. I liked them all. Emmett is a big brother trying his best to take good care of his brother. He loves Billy’s way of looking at the world and his heart just softens immediately when Billy comes into the picture. Billy is an earnest kid who reads a book full of abridged myths and stories of famous people that informs everything he does, Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers and Other Intrepid Travelers. I wish I could see that book! It’s epic. I wish I could read it so I could know the myths and stories of heroes such as Ulyssus, Achilles, Jason, Sinbad, and others in just 8 pages, the way Billy did. And the book had “an array of maps and illustrations designed to fascinate: like the blueprint of da Vinci’s flying machine and the plan of the labyrinth in which Theseus fought the Minotaur.” It sounds magical.
The writing and story reminded me of authors such as Kent Haruf, Ivan Doig, and Leif Enger. I think it’s because their books, too, are often about family members going through adventures together. Billy calls their adventure an escapade. It’s kind of a rip-roaring adventure but not like an action movie. You know and care for each person and you understand them so well because you directly hear their thoughts, motivations, and reasonings.
It is a book that is fun to read. I hope you will pick it up and read it. Don’t be daunted by its largeness—when it ended I was sad; I wanted more!
The list of heroes and adventurers in Billy’s book. They are in alphabetical order so there are 26 chapters. The “Y” chapter is for “You”—blank pages to write your own adventure.
The Lincoln Highway has a map at the beginning.