Reflecting on the smallness of Morgen, Nebraska, native New Yorker Duchess muses: “Living in the big city, rushing around amid all that hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. His chapters, told in first person, are a marvel of singular voice, a mix of high-flown ironical declamations and truths-told-slant that cause readers to deeply care for this wayward, often dangerous, young man. The novel’s standout character, however, is charming ne’er-do-well Duchess, whose rough upbringing at the hands of a fraudulent father, an actor and a grifter, has gifted him with street knowledge and a self-made code of honor. Review: Jonathan Franzen makes the ordinary literary in superb domestic epic 'Crossroads'Ī series of adventures and misadventures ensue, with Emmett playing straight man and Billy his innocent but know-it-all sidekick, whose well-loved copy of 'Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers' provides a mythic counterpoint to their journey to find America’s famed “Lincoln Highway.”

When two stowaways, Duchess and Woolly – former inmates and friends of Emmett’s – escape the work camp and propose to join them, the four must navigate their competing desires (redemption and revenge among them), as well as a single vehicle and a dwindling cash supply. The two boys, having lost their father’s Nebraska farm, set out to find the mother who abandoned them for California. Recently released from juvenile detention on a work camp, Emmett Watson is 18, newly parentless and guardian to his bookish, uniquely knowing 8-year-old brother Billy. This compressed time frame, as well as the multiple points of view of several characters, given in alternating chapters, create a propulsive narrative and a beguiling story about how the past shapes the future. Watch Video: Cynthia Erivo’s moment: new album, new children’s bookĬombining familiar elements of the picaresque, a road trip, a getaway car and the hero’s journey, Amor Towles’ absorbing new novel, 'The Lincoln Highway' (Viking, 592 pp., ★★★½ out of four), is a melange that manages to feel new.Īuthor of the phenomenally bestselling and beloved 'A Gentleman in Moscow,' Towles sets his newest over the course of 10 days in June 1954.

The lincoln highway a novel book review