The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (588 pgs) is a fast-paced and reflective adventure story that centers on three young men whose conflicting motives and moralities set them on a course for collision across the United States. It tells the story of 18-year-old Emmett Watson who hits the road with his little brother, Billy, following his release from a working farm in 1950s Kansas after serving time for involuntary manslaughter, the death of their father, and the foreclosure of their Nebraska farm. Towles’ novel is packed with revelations about the American myth, the art of storytelling, and the unrelenting pull of history.