Amor Towles Follow

This book deserves more than 5 stars.
First book I’ve read by Amor Towles. I’m not a historical fiction reader and wasn’t going to read this one, but the title kept pulling me back. I have to admit that I was also concerned with the 576 pages but that feeling flew out the window fast!
This book has it all. I laughed. I cried. But most of all, I wanted more. More of these characters and their stories.
June 1954. Emmett and Billy are brothers. Emmett is 18 and Billy is 10. Their mother had passed away several years prior and their father has just passed. Emmett is being driven home by the warden of the work farm where he served time for involuntary manslaughter. The home and farm are in foreclosure. Emmett wants to take ownership of his Studebaker and head west with Billy to start over. After he gets home, he discovers that Duchess and Woolly who were at the farm with Emmett, hitched a ride in the warden’s trunk. They have a different plan.
I thought this book was going to be about their travels on The Lincoln Highway, which starts in Times Square and ends in San Francisco. But it was more a story about the characters and their lives.
This book, told in alternating points of view, spans 10 days in the lives of Emmett, Billy, Duchess, Woolly and Sally, who lives next door to Emmett’s dad. Along the way, they meet Ulysses, Pastor John, Townsend and others who intersect into their lives at the right time.
Towles is a master storyteller and I felt like I was there with these characters. I’ve now added his books “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “Rules of Civility” to my list to read and moved them to the top of it.