The Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Read January 2022 - Zoom Reading Circle

The Lincoln Highway spans 10 days in June 1954 as a group of young people travel across the US on The Lincoln Highway encountering adventures and learning more about themselves all along the way.  There was a definite feeling of The Odyssey in this book.  

This was quite a book!  I so enjoyed reading it and found myself thinking about it during the day - anticipating reading again at night.  It wasn't that I loved the characters (I really only liked Billy), but I was drawn into the story.  Each 'voice' was clear and recognizable.  I did note the chapters going backwards from 10 to 1.  But it wasn't until after I finished that I really contemplated that meaning.  Billy had asked Emmett to count to 10 before he acted in anger or hurt someone again.  In a way the book was Emmett building in anger to its conclusion, although quietly.  The end got me... I did not know how the book would end, but didn't expect what happened.  In re-reading the last part of Emmett's story, it says what happened in so many words.  While reading this book I was quite aware that the author was masterful at holding tension throughout without me wanting to yell RUN!  It also inspired me to want to travel the Lincoln Highway coast to coast.  

I rated this book a 5 out of 5 stars.  My book club as a whole rated it 4.1 stars. 

Quotes from the book...

For what is kindness but the performance of an act that is both beneficial to another and unrequired?

Yes, Emmett.  A good Christian shows compassion toward those who are in difficulty. And that is an important part of the parable's meaning. But an equally important point that Jesus is making is that we do not always get to choose to whom we should show our charity. 

How easily we forget - we in the business of storytelling - that life was the point all along. 

Emmett believed that the power within him was new in nature, that no one but he could know what he was capable of, and that he had only just begun to know it himself. 

CBS Saturday Morning with Amor Towles 

Amor Towles website where he answers questions about the book The Lincoln Highway and share the recipe for Fettuccine Mix Amore.  :) 

https://www.amortowles.com/the-lincoln-highway-q-and-a/