Amor Towles’ captivating literary arc has taken him from the era of 1930s flappers and
speakeasies to the political turmoil of early 20th-century Russia, and most recently, to
the American Midwest and glittering New York City skyline of 1954. He explores this
new landscape in his widely anticipated new release: The Lincoln Highway, which is at
once a nostalgic road trip, a daring heist, a Homeric epic, and a richly layered
bildungsroman.
I had been awaiting Towles’ newest release since the moment I finished reading A
Gentleman in Moscow in 2016. Towles’ second book ambitiously traverses three
decades of Russian history through the eyes of Count Alexander Rostov, a former
nobleman on political house arrest in the famed Metropol Hotel. The novel was a critical
and commercial success, quickly becoming one of my favorite books. Its final chapters
are the sort that––even five years later––drift to mind as I’m falling asleep.
Towles published his first novel in 2011 while working full-time as an investment
professional. He gave himself exactly one year to write the story he had been
meticulously outlining, and at the end of the year, the book was finished. The Gatsby-esque
Rules of Civility sold in a bidding war between publishing houses for a six-figure sum, and
Towles quit his job in finance, dedicating himself wholly to his second novel. Reading about
his discipline and precision––and, I’ll admit, his wild success––elevated Towles to a
near-mythic level in my eyes. What aspiring writer wouldn’t admire his straightforward,
capable approach? What’s stopping the rest of us from sitting down, dedicating two
weeks to every chapter, and jotting down a best-seller by the end of the year?
When Towles’ third book was first announced––a brand new era, brand new setting––I
imagined that, to decide on each new novel’s premise, Towles must roll a die to
determine the decade and spin a globe to see where his finger lands. En route from
Nebraska to the Big Apple, The Lincoln Highway journeys through circuses and
brothels, orphanages and nunneries, Harlem townhouses and a fifty-fifth floor office of
the Empire State Building, echoing the likes of Doctorow and Steinbeck and Twain; it
invites us across the country in railroad boxcars and a baby blue Studebaker until we
finally arrive under the gleaming lights of Times Square. Although the story’s rhythm
might have its lulls and its characters can be frustratingly archetypal good-guy or bad-
guy, I was captivated by the novel’s golden tone and elaborately woven narrative.
Eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson’s fifteen-month sentence at a work farm for involuntary
manslaughter has just ended, and after the camp warden drives him home to small-town
Nebraska, he must face his father’s recent death, the foreclosure of their farm, and caretaking
responsibilities for his keenly observant and charmingly curious eight-year-old brother, Billy.
Emmett plans for a fresh start somewhere with a booming population, and Billy is convinced
their mother—absent since he was a baby—is living in California. The brothers make plans to
leave for the West Coast by way of the Lincoln Highway—the United States’ first
transcontinental route—but Emmett soon finds that two of his fellow campmates hitched an
early ride out of Salina in the warden’s trunk. Duchess, smug, performative, excitable, and impassioned, grew up with a traveling showman for a father; a persuasive orator with a Puckish
grin and sleeve of tricks, he has no intention of turning himself back in. Woolly, dreamy and
sensitive, generous and wide-eyed, is reliant on and subdued by his “medicine,” the diminishing
supply of which is presided over by Duchess.
Through a series of Duchess’ deceptions and wily maneuvers, the four boys are set on a course
toward New York—not California––seeking Woolly’s $150,000 inheritance, which Duchess
insists they’ll evenly split. Along the way, Emmett, Duchess, and Woolly encounter unexpected
friends, settle long-held scores, and encounter myriad obstacles as each of their complex,
difficult, and oft-violent pasts slowly unfold before the others.
While A Gentleman in Moscow spans thirty years, The Lincoln Highway, at nearly 600 pages to
Moscow’s approximately 500, captures the events of just ten days. Towles exercises impressive
structural deftness in writing through alternating narrative perspectives. Emmett’s and
Woolly’s chapters are told in third person, and Duchess’ take place in a colloquial first, thick
with personality—but an expansive cast of supporting characters also have their moments in the
limelight. Diabolical Pastor John narrates two chapters of ill-intentioned interactions with
Emmett and Billy. Readers are immersed into the points of view of weary, train-hopping traveler
Ulysses and sheltered Professor Abacus Abernathe—whose insights and perspectives on life and
love and longing resound long after their brief chapters have concluded. Sally, the brothers’
close friend from home, speaks in a responsible and lively first-person in her handful of
designated chapters—though, besides being the novel’s only narrating woman, her role seems
disappointingly peripheral.
By devoting time to each of the character’s perspectives, Towles develops and showcases
each of their distinct moral codes. Throughout the novel, Billy is infatuated with his well-worn
copy of Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid
Travelers, which he has proudly read twenty-four times. The anthology tells of mythic figures
like Achilles and Jason but also of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Edison, all of them labeled
heroes. Towles’ characters, too, seem sometimes to reside under strict labels of hero or villain
or troublemaker––or at least under their own unwavering codes of conduct. Emmett: the stern
and stoic (and repetitively one-dimensional) do-gooder who prefers to “go it alone” when
faced with challenge, who can always discern right from wrong. Duchess: the wild card,
motivated only by his notion of “balancing the scales,” whether their balancing requires that he
enact violence or receive it. Woolly: a drifter who seeks the elusive, nostalgic “one-of-a-kind”
day, blinded to the consequences and repercussions of his actions. Eight-year-old Billy: the
curious observer and naive know-it-all who strives for connection and discovery over all. Each
character is bright and vividly painted, possessing their individual voices and affectionate turns
of phrase, and I found myself empathizing with each of them.
While I was captivated by watching their personalities unfold, I began to feel uncertain about
whether I had watched any of them truly grow by the time I reached the novel’s
conclusion. Tainted by a looming darkness that contrasts its good-natured, adventure-story tone,
the final chapters of The Lincoln Highway suggest that the characters might not be exactly who
we’ve always thought them to be—Emmett especially. Still, this deviation is so sudden and the
novel’s conclusion so abrupt that I felt as though Towles merely mentioned rather than committed to what could have been one of the most interesting and unexpected beats of his
otherwise relatively familiar book.
The novel’s compact ten-day duration and alternating narrators contribute to a discernible push-
pull of narrative momentum. The plot is undeniably action-packed, seeming even part thriller at
times, with nearly every chapter landing on a cliffhanger: a blow is delivered to the back of the
head, an envelope thick with cash has disappeared, a door is deviously locked. But then, as a
cliffhanger lingers, a new chapter will begin and the narrative will jump a few hours back in time
to “catch up” another character’s story to the present moment when the dramatic moment can
finally be resolved. Although it occasionally builds tension, the mechanism becomes noticeably
routine and instead slows things down; it forced me to tap my foot impatiently through
anecdotes, reflections, or recollections I may have otherwise wholly enjoyed. As characters
digress into their memories and recount events long past, Towles establishes a story-within-
a-story structure. This structure parallels the tales Billy reads aloud from his compendium and
also reflects the greater motif of storytelling present in Towles’ work, which, along with the
character’s overt morality, leads the novel to read almost parabolically at times—for better or
worse.
Still, Towles manages to craft a compassionate story about family and friendship. Though I
wasn’t astonished by the inventiveness or originality of The Lincoln Highway’s plot or
characters, I was nonetheless moved by the music, emotion, and observant specificity with which
Towles writes. There is an undeniable magic in adventure stories, collective histories, Fourth of
July fireworks, and watching Times Square light up just after sunset; there’s magic in the way
that people become stories and stories become people, all to be retold under the stars or in
rattling train cars or on road trips with indeterminate destinations.
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