The Lincoln Highway is a travelogue of sorts, about a handful of ex-cons who make their way from Nebraska to New York. The eponymous highway is a kind of anachronism now, but before the creation of the interstate highways it was one of the few ways to get across the country reliably by car. Our band of protagonists follow it to New York in search of treasure, and along the way they learn something of themselves, and we all learn something about this great country of ours. It’s a kind of reverse Grapes of Wrath, one might say.

The book is narrated from a multitude of different perspectives, which I found on the whole entertaining more than jarring. There’s Emmet and Billy Watson, the fomer a released convict who was in the wrong place at the wrong time; the latter his precocious brother. Then there’s Duchess and Woolly, Emmet’s co-inmates, who tag along for the ride. But all the narrations except for one - that of Duchess, one of the ex-cons - are in the first person. Why that is I’m still trying to puzzle out. Duchess is in some respects the perfect tragic anti-hero, and he symbolizes a certain kind of innocent fealty. He is all heart, but that’s not to say he’s totally benevolent - he exacts a fair amount of damage in his own way, with the best of intentions and a touch of craziness in the bargain. He might, perhaps, be meant to represent the United States in the early post-war years, a well-meaning but unintentionally malevolent young rascal, bumbling its way through all manner of capers in search of the almighty dollar. And ignorant of its own story.

The book is certainly meant to be a national epic, a slice of history told in microcosm. Unlike other epics, this story does not capture the experience of a handful of historically significant events through the eyes of our protagonists; there’s nothing that happens in these pages which anyone would recognize from history class.

Instead, this is a story, however oblique, about our sixteenth president, or more precisely the road which bears his name. The Lincoln Highway was a patch work of roads which stretched from New York to California. It united, one might say, the country in the way that Lincoln himself did. It was also the precursor to the interstate highway system, a potent symbol of post-war growth and industrial might. In that sense the book is the story of a country on the precipice of a very wild ride.

Lincoln himself is largely forgotten in this story. He shows up a couple of times, in very muted fashion. The great emancipator’s presence isn’t felt, particularly, in the liberation of three prisoners. His well-documented personality, the tribulations that burdened him and the excesses both enlarged and stained his presidency - none of these are anywhere to be found. Instead there are a few pieces of superficial historical artifacts, a statue here, a recited Gettysburg Address there. I suppose this omission is intentional, a turning-away from the nuance of our own history in all its difficulties. It’s a shame though, I can’t help but feel that Towles would have made much of that history had he chosen to incorporate it.

It’s hard not to see echoes of Huckelberry Finn in this story, with its grasp toward national significance, its outlaw adventurers, and its share of hilarious high jinks. In place of the Mississippi River, there is the Lincoln Highway; in place of young Huck, there is young Billy; and so forth. But this story is about a different kind of freedom than Huck and Jim seek. It’s the freedom from expectations, which I think is really what this book is about; we cannot, it seems to say, innumerable times, predict where our future will take us. There is also, relatedly, the maturity

In roundabout fashion the book is also meant to be a story about stories, about adventure stories in particular. The attempt isn’t subtle, particularly - witness young Billy’s encyclopedia of adventures, with a space intentionally left blank for Billy’s own story. And the appearance, however late, of Ulysses, an explicit moden-day parallel of the Greek wanderer. I felt this side of the story to be too cute by half. But I confess that I would have very much liked to read Billy’s encyclopedia of adventurers, it sounds rather magical on the whole.

The story is written in the shadow of Gentleman from Moscow, Towles’s breakaway 2016 hit. I think that book was more fascinating and wonderful than this one, by a long way. It is difficult to miss the epic nature of that work, and I suspect he meant for the two books to have some relationship to one another. Apparently both books end on the same day, which is certainly not a coincidence - I have to assume a further book from Towles will delve into the mystery.

In any case, this book is a fun read, if uneven and a little plodding in parts. It’s certainly worth reading alongside Gentleman in Moscow.