The Lincoln Highway Summary

Amor Towles’s novel The Lincoln Highway begins in 1954 with eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson returning to his Nebraska home after serving time at a juvenile work farm. With his father dead and the family farm foreclosed, Emmett plans to drive west with his younger brother Billy along the Lincoln Highway, the first coast-to-coast road, chasing the promise of a fresh start. Billy, an eight-year-old devotee of heroic adventure tales, insists they first detour to San Francisco to find the mother who abandoned them years earlier. Their plans are upended by the arrival of two runaways from the same work farm: the charismatic Duchess and the gentle, obsessive Woolly, who bring with them a stolen car, a debt of honor, and a scheme that pulls the brothers toward New York City instead. The narrative unfolds over just ten days, structured in a distinctive way: the novel is divided into sections named for the ten days of the journey, and within each day chapters rotate among multiple first-person narrators, including Emmett, Billy, Duchess, Woolly, and several adults they encounter. This polyphonic framework lets Towles braid together disparate voices, letting the reader see the same events from conflicting angles. Much of the action takes place in transit and in the small towns, rail yards, and hobo camps along the highway, with a notable extended stay in a New York City tenement. The book is a picaresque road odyssey and a study of brotherhood, honor, and the American dream’s underside, recalling Twain and Steinbeck while remaining distinctly Towles’s own. It was published in 2021 and became a bestseller.