Amor Towles

Count Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in a luxury Moscow hotel in 1922. Over decades, his small world becomes a masterclass in living with purpose, elegance, and love.

“The Lincoln Highway” (2021) by Amor Towles is a sprawling, stylish, and deeply American “picaresque” novel. Set over just ten days in June 1954, it follows four young men as they journey across a country that is rapidly changing, yet still steeped in the mythology of the Old West.

The Plot: A Ten-Day Odyssey

The story begins when eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of a juvenile work farm, where he has just finished serving time for involuntary manslaughter.

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  The Plan: Emmett intends to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and drive to California to start a new life. Billy has a map of the Lincoln Highway (the first transcontinental road for automobiles) and believes their mother, who abandoned them years ago, is waiting for them in San Francisco.

  
  


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  The Twist: Two of Emmett’s “friends” from the work farm, the charismatic but unpredictable Duchess and the quiet, traumatized Woolly, have stowed away in the warden’s trunk. They hijack Emmett’s plans—and his car—to head east to New York City instead, seeking a “legacy” Duchess believes he is owed.

  
  

The Characters: A Study in Archetypes

1. Emmett (The Pragmatist)

The steady hand. Emmett is focused on the future, on building things (he is a carpenter), and on his responsibility to his brother. He represents the classic American ideal of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.”

2. Duchess (The Schemer)

One of Towles’ most vivid creations. Duchess lives by a strict, warped moral code of “settling the score.” If someone does him a kindness, he must repay it; if someone wrongs him, he must extract a debt. This “balancing of the books” drives the novel’s chaos.

3. Billy (The Dreamer)

The moral center of the book. Armed with his book Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Billy views the world through the lens of myths and legends. To him, their journey isn’t just a car ride; it’s an epic quest.

4. Woolly (The Innocent)

A gentle soul from a wealthy New York family who simply doesn’t fit into the modern world. His desire for a “one-of-a-kind day” provides the book with its most poignant and tragic moments.

Key Themes: Fate and the Open Road

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  The Path vs. The Destination: While the Lincoln Highway is the title, the characters spend very little time actually on it. The book is a meditation on how we are often diverted from our “planned” lives by the choices (and debts) of others.

  
  


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  American Mythology: Towles weaves in references to The Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn, and classic Westerns. He explores the idea of the “American West” not as a place, but as a promise of reinvention.

  
  


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  The Class Divide: Through Woolly’s aristocratic background and the other boys’ hardscrabble lives, the novel examines the different “Americas” that existed simultaneously in the 1950s.

  
  

Why It’s a 2026 Favorite

In 2026, The Lincoln Highway remains a beloved “vacation read” that feels substantial.

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  The Structure: The book uses a “countdown” structure, starting at Chapter Ten and counting down to One, creating a sense of propulsive inevitability as the characters converge on New York City.

  
  


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  The Prose: Towles (author of A Gentleman in Moscow) writes with a sophisticated, vintage elegance that makes 1954 feel both nostalgic and immediate.