Amor Towles’s latest book, The Lincoln Highway, came out a little more than a year ago. I picked it up, feeling hopeful I could write a positive Lincoln Highway book review at the end.

This is the second book by Towles that I’ve read. I tried A Gentleman in Moscow a little while back (click here for my review). In that book, Towles showed quality storytelling abilities, stylistically, but the book was rather boring. It had no tension because Count von Rostov lived in a single hotel room for decades at a time. I was hoping for a better book when the topic allowed dramatic things to happen.

Did The Lincoln Highway deliver?

Characters of The Lincoln Highway

Somewhat unusually, the book has four main characters. Emmett Watson just got back to his Nebraska home from reform school for killing a person. He’s not as bad as that sounds—Emmett punched a bully at the fair, the bully ended up dead due to unfortunate circumstances.

Emmett’s brother Billy is another important character. He is eight, but ends up going with Emmett on his adventures because their father died recently and their mother left the home years ago. This suits Billy just fine—his prized possession is a book about famous adventurers from history.

Then we have Emmett’s two friends from reform school, Duchess and Woolly. Duchess is the worst kind of friend. He’s the “friend” who manipulates and acts selfishly for his own purposes, then tries to make up for it with grand flourishes meant to earn forgiveness.

Woolly is rather different. He’s the son of a wealthy, prominent family, yet humble, kind, and devoid of guile. The trouble is, he’s both clumsy and rather simpleminded. The clumsiness is what got him to the reform school to begin with. His intellectual struggles are the cause of most of the rest of the unhappiness in his life.

Click Here to Follow Rob’s Blog!

The Lincoln Highway Book Review – Plot Basics

The Watson brothers start out with a good plan upon Emmett’s return. They’ll leave the unpleasant memories of Nebraska behind and get a new start in San Francisco. The boys hope to find their mother, too, while Emmett engages in what we’d term flipping houses. So far, so good.

But, Duchess and Woolly have stolen a ride to Nebraska in the trunk of the car that brings Emmett home. They want to go to New York because Woolly’s rich family has left him a huge pile of money in trust. But, not only are they on the lam, they have no car and no money.

So, Duchess steals Emmett’s car, forcing Emmett and Billy to have to go to New York to get the car back, so that they can then go back across the country to start over in San Francisco and maybe find their mother. Adventures arise en route, some interesting characters appear, problems pop up. I won’t give away more plot than I already have.

Click Here for a Free Ebook From Rob!

The Lincoln Highway Book Review – Was It Enjoyable?

I’ll note the same strengths in this The Lincoln Highway book review that I found in A Gentleman in Moscow. Towles writes very smoothly. The story is easy to follow without the writing being too simplistic. We get an excellent feel for each of the main characters. Their backgrounds make their behavior in the present entirely believable.

Unlike A Gentleman in Moscow, this book has more than a bare minimum of drama and tension. So, it must be a winner, right?

Close, but not quite. The Watson’s don’t really have much at stake after they reach New York and find Emmett’s car. When the story ends, they still have thirteen days to reach San Francisco by their appointed goal. Other than that, they don’t have much to lose besides wanting a new start in life, which most all of us wouldn’t mind having now and then.

The fate of Duchess and Woolly in the final chapters was not what I expected for either character. And, I’m not sure it was a very good ending for them—neither got what they deserved. Which is life, sometimes. But I found the end both disappointing and with some threads unresolved.

Finally, the story opens with the Watsons wanting to look for their mother, who left them several years ago and has not communicated since. This is something we can applaud. Yet, with the exception of one chapter, we learn very little about her. The boys rarely talk about her as the story unfolds. For being a main driver of the story when it opens, any questions of why the mom remains a driving force throughout go unanswered.

Conclusion

My The Lincoln Highway book review is a little uncertain about how good the book actually is. Most other readers liked it. I suppose it’s easy to get sucked in by Towles’s storytelling skills. But when I break it down, I don’t find much more than just a well-written story about two brothers and two friends set in the 1950s. The problems they must overcome are purely personal. The setting of the story revolves around no significant historical event. Yet, the brothers experience no major shifts in their outlook on life or way of behaving toward others.

So, I suppose that your reaction to the book will depend on how much you require character development to enjoy a book. If you like it, probably you’ll be disappointed in The Lincoln Highway. But, if your tastes don’t require a story that has a big picture point, and you’re satisfied reading well-told stories with interesting characters, chances are this book will read a lot better to you.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to scroll down and subscribe to my blog before you go.

Please Subscribe!

If you enjoyed this blog, please sign up to follow it by scrolling down or clicking here, and recommending it to your friends. I’d love to have you aboard! You can also join the more than 1,000 members of my Readers Club for Rob Bauer Books by clicking here or like me on Facebook and Instagram. Please check out my historical fiction novels, too. If you find this information valuable, supporting me helps keep this blog going.

As always, I welcome constructive and polite discussion in the comments section, especially if you’ve read the book and want to share your impression of it. Thank you!