On this StudioTulsa podcast, I speak with the 2023 Tulsa Library Trust's Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award winner Amor Towles. While Towles doesn't have the long booklist of most Helmerich winners, his three novels have all been critically acclaimed and NY Times bestsellers.
Towles, who always wanted to be a writer, didn't really begin writing full-time until he was in his 40s. His debut novel, Rules of Civility has had comparisons to The Great Gatsby and follows a young woman in 1930's New York who finds herself thrust up into New York City high society.
His follow-up novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, tells the story of an aristocratic Russian count, his story begins with his arrest after the Russian Revolution, and weaves into his life before and after arrest, where he's confined to house arrest at Moscow's luxury hotel, The Metropol. There, he watches history unfold in Soviet Russia.
His most recent novel, The Lincoln Highway, tells the story of four youths on a road trip from Nebraska to New York, in a Homeric Odyssey-like adventure.