They are aided by Sally, a family friend, and Ulysses, a black man they meet on the train. When Emmett declines, Duchess 'borrows' Emmett's car, forcing Emmet and Billy to stowaway on a train to New York to find Duchess and Woolly and reclaim it. However, two guys (Duchess and Woolly) have snuck out from juvie and have followed Emmett home, hoping to convince him to help with a caper in New York to take back Woolly's $150K trust fund (which Woolly has been deemed 'unfit' to access). Billy hopes to find their mother (who left them 8 years ago) there. The two-paragraph version: Emmett (18) has just gotten out of juvie and is now planning to drive down the Lincoln Highway to move to San Francisco with his younger brother Billy (8). (The Detailed Plot Summary is also available, below) Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.

Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction-to the City of New York.

His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew.īut when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. In The Lincoln Highway, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska in June 1954 by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter.

Novel the lincoln highway