Books: “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles

According to Sir Isaac Newton, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Novelist Amor Towles must’ve taken that into account because in “The Lincoln Highway,” his cast of characters almost never stand still.

The story begins as Emmett, an 18-year-old Nebraskan, is released early from his sentence at a work camp, and returns to his family farm where his younger brother Billy lives. Unbeknownst to Emmett, fellow inmates Duchess and Woolly sneak out of confinement at the same time, and follow Emmett home.

Emmett has no intention of getting mixed up with these characters again; he wants to move to Texas and begin dealing real estate. Little brother Billy, on the other hand, wants them to drive the Lincoln Highway (the first transcontinental highway ever built) all the way  to San Francisco. He wants to find their mother, who abandoned the boys 10 years earlier and sent them postcards from her stops along the Lincoln Highway.

But before they can decide where they’re going, Duchess and Woolly abscond with Emmett’s car and take the Lincoln Highway east in pursuit of what they imagine is Woolley’s inheritance. This sets up a series of automobile and train chases across small-town America, all the way to New York City, where one of them observes, “Manhattan was absolutely filled with expectations. There were so many expectations, they had to build the buildings 80 stories high so they would have enough room to stack them one on top of another.”

Towles, the author of “A Gentleman in Moscow”, tells the story alternately from the POV of Emmett, Billy, Duchess, and Woolly. Four characters with nothing in common but the desire to do anything and everything to achieve their goals—whether it’s retrieving an inheritance that may not exist or driving a car cross-country to find a lost mom.

If you like on-the-road adventure, you’ll love “The Lincoln Highway.” And even though it’s long (nearly 600 pages), the writing is so engaging and the plotting so ingenious, you’ll travel through it like a hot knife through butter.