The year is 1954, and Emmett Watson hopes his bad luck has ended and opportunity and hopefulness lie before him. After spending a year in a juvenile detention work farm, his sentence earned after he punched a mouthy bully who had the misfortune to smash his head on concrete on the way down and die, Emmett is granted early release due the death of his father. Emmett’s mother had abandoned the family about 6 years ago, and Emmett and his younger brother Billy, discover a string of postcards she sent that their father never shared with them, but kept with his private papers all the same. An inept farmer and manager of money, their father lost the farm due to debt and the bank’s foreclosure. Deciding on a fresh start in a new place, where no memories of the recent tragedy will create friction, Billy pressures Emmett to set off on the Lincoln Highway as their mother had, with a destination of Lincoln Park, San Francisco for the 4th of July, where one of the nation’s largest fireworks displays take place each summer. Emmett arrives at the same conclusion, seeing the sense of California as a home, and his dream of working as a carpenter, flipping houses and building new ones for the burgeoning population. While Emmett sees the unlikelihood of every finding their mother, he doesn’t have the heart to ruin Billy’s dream, and agrees to embark on this road trip, originating from their birthplace of Nebraska.

But a simple road trip is not in the cards for the brothers, for two of Emmett’s fellow detainees manage to escape the work farm and decide to hitch a ride in Emmett’s Studebacker— Dutchess and Wooley. Dutchess, a true conniver, manipulator, and opportunist, manages to make off with Emmett’s car, heading east to New York City, where he hopes to settle a few scores, and make off with a stash of cash locked up at Wooley’s family estate in the Adirondacks of northern New York state. With Emmett and Billy in hot pursuit, a simple road trip quickly becomes complex and at times, treacherous. Billy manages to befriend fellow travelers along the way, sharing stories from his traveling volume of Dr. Abacus Abernathy’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers. An alphabetical anthology of stories featuring tales of Achilles to Zorro, including Y for You, with blank pages for your story, Billy and those he befriends extract numerous meanings from the stories he shares.

A real page-turner, with the reader rooting for Emmett and Billy to stay safe and get back on course westward, this is a terrific tale full of questions about good and evil, lessons about courage and sacrifice, and how to choose the right course in life. There is much to enjoy here. Highly recommended.