In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter.

With his mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett plans to pick up his eight-year-old brother Billy and head to California to start a new life. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have stowed away in the trunk of the warden's car. They have a very different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take the four of them on a fateful journey in the opposite direction - to New York City.

'Deserves a place alongside Kerouac, Steinbeck and Wolfe as the very best of the genre' OBSERVER

'An absolute beauty of a book. As soon as I finished it, I wanted to read it again' TANA FRENCH

'Welcome to the enormous pleasure that is The Lincoln Highway . . . in which the miles fly by and the pages turn fast' ANN PATCHETT