Description: "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, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it." Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person--man or woman--to walk it twice and three times."--
Review Quotes: "Grandma Gatewood's Walk is a brilliant look at an America--both good and bad--that 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