The Lincoln Highway

Emmett Watson is driven home by the warden of the juvenile detention facility from which Emmett was just released. His father has recently died, his mother is gone, and the family farm has been foreclosed upon. Emmett plans to take his brother, Billy, and start a new life in a city far away, but the sudden arrival of two friends from the facility, Duchess and Woolly, pull Emmett into another direction.

One of the memorable things about this novel is that every character, from young Billy to deeply flawed Duchess and, oddly, even the villains of the book like the wicked preacher, has something to offer the world and, more specifically, to the developing character of eighteen-year-old Emmett.

The truth of the novel is that each character is deeply flawed and, out of these flaws and the consequences of those flaws, each character becomes a better human being.

A wise book that I heartily recommend.