Grandma Gatewood's Walk

February 23, 2015
Montgomery introduces listeners to Emma Gatewood, a woman who walked the length of the Appalachian Trail at age 67 in 1955 and twice more in the decade that followed. By her amazing feats, she secured attention and interest in a decaying national treasure and helped preserve it. Through research, interviews, and journals accounts, Montgomery pieces together Gatewood’s physical journey, interspersing it with her life story and the challenges that lead her down the Appalachian trail. Reader Lawlor has a warm and inviting voice that is soft but deep. It invites the listener to follow along in Gatewood’s journey. He provides a good cadence, combined with a strong emphasis and warm delivery. He fleshes out Montgomery’s prose with a bit more personality and enthusiasm than the text has on its own, which makes the production more enticing. His character voices are not impressive, but that hardly detracts from the listening experience since the story is focused entirely on Gatewood. A Chicago Review hardcover.

February 1, 2014
A journalist's biography of the unassuming but gutsy 67-year-old Ohio grandmother who became the first person to walk all 2,050 miles of the Appalachian Trail three times. When Emma Gatewood (1887-1983) first decided she would hike the A.T., she told no one what she planned to do--not even her 11 children or 23 grandchildren. Instead, she quietly slipped away from her home in May 1955 and began her walk at the southern terminus of the trail in Georgia. Accomplishing this feat--which she often described as "a good lark"--was enough for her. Tampa Bay Times staff writer Montgomery tells the story of Gatewood's first hike and those that followed, interweaving the story with the heartbreaking details of her earlier life. He suggests that this woman, who eventually came to be known as "Queen of the Forest," was far from the eccentric others claimed she was. Instead, Montgomery posits that this celebrated hiker used long-distance walking to help her come to terms with a dark secret. At 18, Gatewood married a man she later discovered had a violent temper and an insatiable sexual appetite. Despite repeated beatings over 30 years, she remained with him until he nearly killed her. Afterward, she lived happily with her children for almost 20 years. Montgomery suggests that an article in National Geographic may have been what first inspired Gatewood to hike the trail. However, as her remarkable trek demonstrated, while the A.T. was as beautiful as the magazine claimed, it was also in sore need of maintenance. Gatewood's exploits, which would later include walking the Oregon Trail, not only brought national attention to the state of hikers' trails across a nation obsessed with cars and newly crisscrossed with highways; it also made Americans more aware of the joys of walking and of nature itself. A quiet delight of a book.

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March 1, 2014
In 1955, at 67, Gatewood left her small Ohio town and her 11 children and 23 grandchildren and set off to trek the Appalachian Trail. She'd long been fascinated by the 2,050-mile trail and was particularly lured by the fact that no woman had ever hiked it alone. Knowing her family wouldn't approve, she didn't tell them when she set out with a little 17-pound sack of supplies and no tent or sleeping bag. Journalist Montgomery draws on interviews with Gatewood's surviving family members and hikers she met on her five-month journey as well as news accounts and Gatewood's diaries to offer a portrait of a determined woman, whose trek inspired other hikers and brought attention to the neglect of the Appalachian Trail. She became a hiking celebrity, appearing on television with Groucho Marx and Art Linkletter. Montgomery intertwines details of Gatewood's hike with recollections from her early life and difficult marriage. Maps of the trail and photos from Gatewood's early life enhance this inspiring story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)