“With exquisitely drawn characters, beautiful writing and a real sense of moral integrity, The Lincoln Highway already feels like an American coming of age classic to sit alongside The Catcher In The Rye and To Kill A Mockingbird.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Just finished The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.
This story takes place over ten days in 1954. Emmett Watson had just been released from a juvenile work farm early because of the death of his father.
Emmett is driven home by the warden. His former home has been sold by the bank so he has to find a new place to live. All he has left in his eight year old brother Billy. They are going to head to San Francisco to look for their missing mother who left nine years ago, and except for some postcards when she first left, has not been heard of since. Neighbors had been taking care of Billy.
The first surprise comes when after the warden leaves, who walks in the door but two fellow inmates, Duchess and Whooley. They hid in the trunk of the wardens car, and pretty soon all of Emmitt and Billy’s plans will be out the window.
Instead of California, everyone will end up traveling East into a wild adventure until it concludes on the tenth day.
There are terrific characters and incidents in this book, some reminiscent of a Steinbeck story, some influenced by the non horror writings of Stephen King.
While the story does continuously go back and forth giving details of each individuals movements during these incidents, it’s necessary to get a full picture of what is really going on.
This is the authors third book and he seems to get better with each book. Some might say this book could have even been better as I think many of us will prefer certain story lines over other story lines, and you may want to talk about the ending with someone who has read it to see how they feel about it, but this is a very good book, so well written, really terrific characters, and it’s a page turner.
Highly recommended.
Reviewed by:
Richard Franco
Added 16th December 2021
