Book review: A long and winding tale of life-changing adventures

"The Lincoln Highway"

Author: Amor Towles

Viking, 588 pages, $30

“The Lincoln Highway” is the latest book from award-winning author Amor Towles. This book is unusual in several respects: its length, its format — with multiple points of view/narrators — and its unconventional punctuation. I admit I didn’t dive into the book with lightning speed. Like a fine wine, it needed to breathe a bit in my consciousness.

As the book evolved, I became more and more engaged by the characters’ present experiences and their diverse, life-shaping backstories. Towles’ narrative and prose at first appeared simple. But as the story unfolded, I was intrigued by its unexpected depths and undercurrents. The author’s master hand at work.

The core storyline revolves around three young men who meet in and depart from a juvenile detention facility: Emmett Watson, “Duchess” Hewett and Wooly Martin. The other main character, and travel companion, is Billy, Watson’s highly precocious 8-year-old-brother. “The Lincoln Highway” is a road-trip-buddy book with a myriad of mixed agendas and detours.

The action (and there’s a lot of it) unfolds over a 10-day period, starting in Nebraska and ending in New York state with chunks of it occurring along the eponymous transcontinental Lincoln Highway. Along this journey the group of four split up and reshape much like an amoeba. During periods where the group is in some fashion divided (by the most inventive of circumstances), a cast of supporting characters arrive onstage. Conscious of spoilers and with too many to name, I’ll mention my two favorite supporting characters: a riding-the-rails man named Ulysses and one Professor Abernathe, the author of the “Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers and Other Intrepid Travelers.”

Much like his Greek mythological namesake, Ulysses performs an act of heroism (in a boxcar) and has been wandering for 10 years, yearning for his wife and child. His encounter with Billy is transformative. It leaves him, and the reader, with hope for a long-sought reunion.

The professor is introduced at the start of the story with young Billy obsessively reading from his red-leathered tome to himself and others. Billy’s serendipitous New York City encounter with his beloved author helps the boy fulfill his dreams and has a life-changing impact on the author, too.

In summary, “The Lincoln Highway” follows a long and winding road rife with numerous off and on ramps. The book reads a bit more like 19th or early 20th century literature with more pages to the payoff, but I found the prose, important themes, compelling characters and twists-you-never-saw-coming well worth the investment of time and thought.

Jacksonville author Claudia N. Oltean is currently completing a two-book historical fiction series set during Prohibition/The Roaring ’20s.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Book review: 'The Lincoln Highway' by Amor Towles