The Lincoln Highway

 

The Lincoln Highway – by Amor Towles

I imagine it’s awfully difficult to follow up such a brilliant novel as “A Gentleman in Moscow”. Especially since that book was only the second one on the author’s resume.  It’s best not to compare this one with that one.  This was a very good book. Had I not been the wiser, I doubt if I would have ever made the connection that these two books were written by the same author.  Writing this book for the author must have been how Michael Jackson felt every time he tried to release an album after “Thriller”.  Never mind.

This book takes place in 1954, and it simply couldn’t have been the same tale had it been told in the current day. We meet 17-year-old Emmet Watson. He’s being released from a juvenile detention facility somewhere in Kansas a bit early because his father in neighboring Nebraska has just passed away. There’s also no mom. She left years ago.  When Emmet arrives home, he discovers that the bank is also about to foreclose on the family home, so he and his 8-year-old brother Billy decide to take a small inheritance that their father secretly left him (can’t let the bank know) along with Emmet’s Studebaker, and head to San Francisco via the Lincoln Highway to try to find mom.

Out of the blue appears two of Emmet’s chums from the detention facility. It seems they “escaped” to see Emmet but have every intention of going back. They just need a ride to the train station to go back, so they pile into the Studebaker with Emmet and Billy.

Well, let’s just say things get a bit sidetracked. The four boys manage to go on quite a journey, but not the one we expected.  During the journey, the author alternates every chapter with a different character providing the first-person narrative.  So we learn about what’s going on in the heads of all of these boys (the two friends from the detention center are named Duchess and Wooley).  We learn about their pasts, their desires, their personalities, and what exactly it was that put them in such a place as a juvenile detention center.  We end up believing that these three are all “good boys” essentially, but circumstances dealt them fates that most kids don’t have to deal with, so they end up in less than pleasant environments for much of their lives.

In many ways, little Billy is the “center” of this story.  He seems wide-eyed an innocent, and he came across as a tad too smart for an 8-year-old.  He carries around an adventure book that has 26 stories of famous people. The book is for 8-year-olds, of course. One story for each letter in the alphabet. There’s even a blank chapter for the reader to include their own adventure.  Do you see where this is going?

There was a time, around 60-75% of the way into the book, where much of the adventures and predicaments in this book became a tad too unbelievable, unrealistic, and even unnecessary.  I almost felt as though the author was trying to pad his novel by an additional 100-pages or so.  Yet I thought the book had a satisfying ending, even though there were still an awful lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of events that I thought we would get to read about that never made it into the story.

I would highly recommend this book. I’ll point out again, though, that I didn’t see any similarities between this book and “Moscow” however.  I’m sure the story isn’t for everybody, but I felt it was very enjoyable and loved reading about the characters as they progressed through their journey.