The Lincoln Highway: A Novel

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles — a #1 New York Times Bestseller, Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, and Best Book of the Year selection by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama — is a sweeping, richly crafted adventure set in 1950s America.

In June 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is released from a juvenile work farm after serving time for involuntary manslaughter. With his father dead, their Nebraska farm lost, and his only goal to start anew in California with his younger brother Billy, Emmett’s plans are upended when two fellow inmates appear unexpectedly, drawing him into an unforeseen journey east—to New York City.

Unfolding over ten days and told through multiple perspectives, Towles’s masterful novel explores brotherhood, fate, and the unpredictable roads that shape our lives. Evoking classics like The Odyssey and Huckleberry Finn, The Lincoln Highway is both an epic adventure and a profound meditation on the journeys that define us.