Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery
2014 National Outdoor Book Award Winner in History / Biography
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, sixty-seven-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. By September 1955 she stood atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, sang "America, the Beautiful," and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."
Driven by a painful marriage, Grandma Gatewood not only hiked the trail alone, she was the first person--man or woman--to walk it twice and three times. At age seventy-one, she hiked the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity, and appeared on TV with Groucho Marx and Art Linkletter. The public attention she brought to the trail was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.
Author Ben Montgomery interviewed surviving family members and hikers Gatewood met along the trail, unearthed historic newspaper and magazine articles, and was given full access to Gatewood's own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence. Grandma Gatewood's Walkshines a fresh light on one of America's most celebrated hikers.
"Grandma Gatewood's Walk is a brilliant look at an Americaboth good and badthat has slipped away, seen through the eyes and feet of one of America's most unlikely heroines. Gatewood's story suggests anything is possible; no matter your age, gender, or quality of your walking shoes." STEPHEN RODRICK, AUTHOR OF THE MAGICAL STRANGER
"Grandma Gatewood's Walk is sure to fuel not only the dreams of would-be hikers, but debates on the limits of endurance, the power of determination, and the nature of myth." EARL SWIFT, AUTHOR OF THE BIG ROADS
"A quiet delight of a book." KIRKUS REVIEWS
Ben Montgomery is the founder of the narrative journalism website Gangrey.com and a former enterprise reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. For a series called For Their Own Good, documenting abuse at Florida's oldest reform school, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting in 2010 and earned the Dart Award and Casey Medal. He and his family reside in Tampa. The Man Who Went Backward, The Leper Spy, and Granny Gatewood's Stroll are among his works.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781613734995 |
| ISBN 10 | 1613734999 |
| Title | Grandma Gatewood's Walk |
| Author | Ben Montgomery |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Chicago Review Press |
| Year published | 2016-04-01 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |