Life is a matter of perspective, and in truth, there are many. As many as there are people, each one part of a finite story that stretches across time. This is the opening premise of Amor Towles’ Lincoln Highway, a sweeping novel that invites readers into a memorable chapter of American life. The book follows a young protagonist through a sprawling landscape of dreams and doubt, building a narrative that resonates with readers across the United States and Canada who crave character-driven epics.
The setting is a vibrant slice of New York life, where the action unfolds in a neighborhood of Gramercy Park, nestled between Union Square, the Flatiron District, and the East Village. New York remains a city of striking contrasts, and Towles makes those contrasts feel tangible. Quiet, tree-lined streets give way to overwhelming crowds, late-night bustle, and the impermanence of luxury that still somehow feels intimate. The city’s pulse is reflected in the conversation itself, framed by the soft jazz drifting from a nearby garden as if the music were there to underscore the moment. Towles’ sensibility—his taste in art, furniture, and decoration—speaks to a cosmopolitan sensibility and a refined, expressive prose that mirrors the author’s own life.
Success
Towles arrived on the literary scene a bit later than some, publishing his first novel, Rules of Courtesy, in 2011 while still navigating a demanding financial career. The work arrived with a quiet certainty, its success neither accidental nor fleeting. From an early age, Towles understood that writing was his true calling, a realization sparked in elementary school during a visit from poet David McCord. His first major character appeared in the Vineyard Gazette, a local publication on Martha’s Vineyard, where he spent summers during his youth. The columns, written by a boy named Edward Dillon, drew readers in with the sheer power of imagination. It turned out that the voice behind those stories belonged to Towles himself, a fact that would only become clearer as the years passed and his career unfolded.
The path continued through Stanford and Yale, where mentors like Peter Matthiessen, co-founder of The Paris Review, encouraged Towles to write with persistence. Matthiessen’s support was pivotal, even as Towles first pursued a pragmatic path in finance in order to satisfy family expectations. Eventually, he left the corporate world to devote himself fully to writing, and the publication of The Rules of Courtesy marked a breakout moment on the international stage. A later work, Just Like a Gentleman in Moscow, took a Russian aristocrat through the opulence and peril of the Metropol hotel, further cementing Towles’ stature as a storyteller who can blend historical textures with vibrant, memorable characters.
Transport
Lincoln Highway opens a window into a recent past, transporting Towles’ readers to mid-20th-century America. The narrative voice multiplies in a chorus of eight different perspectives, following a group of young travelers who traverse the country along a route that left an indelible mark on American road culture. The central question the book probes is what it means to be eighteen in a time of rapid change. It is a moment when assumptions are tested, family rules are questioned, and new identities begin to form. Towles describes this emergence with a clear eye for detail and a generous sense of historical texture, letting the Illinois and Nebraska landscapes become as much a character as any human presence.
As the story unfolds, the characters mature alongside their surroundings. The narrative timeline centers on a ten-day journey across the Midwest to New York, a journey that mirrors a broader evolution within the country itself. Towles notes that the United States of the mid-1950s resembled a teenager: energetic, optimistic, and powerful, yet still marked by a stark social landscape where civil rights, gender politics, and cultural upheaval were quietly brewing. The era’s promise coexists with serious challenges, a duality that informs every decision the characters make and every turn the road takes.
Towles initially discovered the Lincoln Highway not through invention but by consulting a map. He contrasts this with his creation of Yoknapatawpha, the fictional region central to much of Faulkner’s work, noting that most Americans remain obscure about the highway’s historical significance. Still, it stands as a symbol of expansion and travel, a thread tying together generations of writers who used the road to explore identity, society, and the American spirit. The highway embodies a larger tradition in Western storytelling: a journey that reveals how a person changes, what they choose to believe, and how those choices shape the life that follows. Homer’s Odyssey and Don Quixote are kept in mind as touchstones, not as blueprints, but as reminders that a journey can illuminate character more effectively than any destination could ever reveal.
Towles resists a label of historical novelist. History, for him, is a backdrop that helps construct places, times, and moods, not a focus in itself. The real interest lies in human interaction and the way people respond to changing circumstances. He explains that setting a story in different eras appeals because it challenges him to reinvent his style without abandoning the core obsessions that define his voice. The goal is not to chase topical subjects but to explore timeless questions through fresh contexts, inviting readers to see familiar themes through a new lens.
Looking ahead, Towles hints at new projects that promise to push his storytelling in unexpected directions. The forthcoming work is said to begin in Cairo in the 1940s and conclude in New York in 1999, signaling a continued commitment to evolving landscapes and evolving characters. Yet, beneath the shifts in setting, the author emphasizes the same creative impulse: change that compels reinvention, paired with a consistent, recognizable voice that seeks to illuminate the human condition in vivid, accessible terms. The promise remains that each new Towles novel will arrive with its own distinctive mood while carrying forward the core concerns that define his storytelling ethos, and readers in North America can expect that the journey will always be worth taking.