Having worked as an investment professional in Manhattan for over twenty years, he now devotes himself fulltime to writing. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.īorn and raised in the Boston area, Amor Towles graduated from Yale College and received an MA in English from Stanford University.

Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. This review is available to non-members for a limited time.The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America There is something appealing about the conjunction of bravery and mischief, and it's reassuring how the novel comes full circle and promises further adventures ahead.

Other readers, no doubt, will appreciate the old-fashioned American road trip vibe. Despite the condensed timeframe here, it's a meandering story that can try one's patience.

Woolly is a dozy, melancholy young man, described as being 'not all there' or 'away with the fairies.' A danger with an episodic narrative like this one is that random events and encounters pile up but don't do much to further the plot. Duchess is a delightfully flamboyant bounder, peppering his speech with malapropisms and Shakespeare quotes - he takes after his father, a roguish traveling actor who abandoned him at an orphanage. Precocious Billy steals every scene he appears in. The Lincoln Highway features some fantastic characters.

The lincoln highway book summary