Review: The Lincoln Highway (Amor Towles) The June selection for the Music Hall book club! And just a few weeks ago, I went to the Writers on a New England Stage production at at the Music Hall to hear Amor Towles talk about this book. Naturally, I cannot remember much of the specifics of that talk, but I really loved his earthy, warm, intelligent and generous spirit. I really did like this book a lot; perhaps I liked A Gentleman in Moscow better, but I am not really sure, since I enjoyed each of them so much. There seems to have been a bit of negative sniping about it "not really being a road trip" or "disliking the ending"... sorry for those folks, I guess, because the joy of this book is its spirit, wherever that might lead you. Sure, you are anticipating a road trip due to the title and the early chapters, and yes, the ending is something strangely sad and affective, although the more I let it sit with me, the more I feel that much is unfinished in the book as well as in our minds, and that is rather appropriate. The sections count down from Ten to One; I am not sure why and will be interested to see what others think. But different chapters are told in a curiously perfect mix of omniscient narrator opening the chapter and the rest, even though in the third person, absolutely the mindset of a particular character, each distinctive and each totally believable. Emmett has just been released from a juvie detention facility (you learn all the back stories through the storytelling...), come home to Nebraska where his father has recently died and lost his farm in the process, to his younger brother Billy (a fabulous character!), and to an unknown future, but Emmett knows they need a new start away from this place, and he has a well thought-out plan of taking his old Studebaker and going to Texas with a bit of money dad squirreled away in the car in order to give his kids a chance. Precocious Billy persuades Emmett that they need to go to California, because he has discovered that indeed their mother, who left them a long time ago, did at first since postcards home from places along the famous Lincoln Highway, and that California in the early 50's offered better opportunities (and a reunion perhaps with this long-lost mother). Unbeknownst to Emmett, two runaways from the juvie center stowed away in the trunk of the warden's car which delivered Emmett home to Nebraska. These two are Duchess (con man extraordinaire but eloquent and well-educated, the most difficult character to wrap your head around because he does appalling things and yet can be charmingly endearing) and Woolly, a somewhat simple-minded but absolutely sweet young man from a super wealthy family which has largely given up on him (and whom you can't help but love for his all-encompassing attitude of acceptance, wonder, and eagerness). Into this general mix come Sally, who took care of Billy after his father died and before Emmett returned and who is just plain tired of being the caretaker of her father, and Ulysses, a black GI who returned from WWII to find his wife and child gone and has ridden the rails ever since, convinced it was deserved and his life fairly ruined. But Emmett and Billy, with his beloved compendium book of real and imaginary heroes (which plays a major role throughout the tale), don't head out west, because Duchess, with Woolly in tow, steals the car and heads to New York City (The Lincoln Highway actually began in Times Square), on his own mission. Billy and Emmett ride the rails to chase them down, and during that time they meet Ulysses. Any more would enter into the realm of spoilers, so I shall desist. A rollicking, sweet but sad, hopeful yet frustrating picture of the times with beautiful, even if flawed, characters (so isn't that realistic?). I wanted to protect many of them, and slap a few others around, figuratively speaking, of course. Does it end well? hmm.....

on the bench near the entrances