It is June 1954 and Emmett Watson’s return from a youth offenders’ institute to his home in Morgen, Nebraska is not a happy one. He is glad to be reunited with his younger brother, Billy, and to see girl next door, Sally, but his father has died, the farm is being repossessed, and everyone in town remembers and won’t forgive why he was sent down.
But Emmett has a plan to take his two remaining assets – his 1943 powder blue Studebaker Land Cruiser and $3,000 in cash that his father has hidden away from the creditors – to California where population is booming and opportunities beckon. That chimes with Billy; the route to the west is along the Lincoln Highway, the first road to fully cross America and the way taken by Emmett and Billy’s mother when she quit the marital home many years previously. Billy thinks they will find her at the end of the road.
Emmett’s best laid plans are immediately derailed as two pals from prison, Duchess and Woolly, turn up. They are absent without leave, and their arrival sets in motion a sequence of events that send Emmett the wrong way along the eponymous highway, towards New York.
The roller coaster journeys of Emmett, Billy, Duchess, and Woolly (not always together) provide for rollocking, overlapping adventures told from the four perspectives (supplemented by a few other points of view). It leads to a fitting, un-signposted climax.
It is written with
style and a feel for the period. The characters are nicely drawn, and the
multiple perspectives propel the reader over the miles and the 500+ pages. But
don’t expect these mates to ever get to the planned San Francisco destination
before the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment