From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

Ben Montgomery

Start date: September 1, 2025

Discussion: Current Monthly Group Read

Why we're reading this: September 2025 group read (which could fill "a forgotten woman in history")…more
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What Members Thought

Sep 30, 2018 Chessa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, nature, biography

This was overall really good! I listened to the audio and I don’t regret that format choice.

Grandma Gatewood is an extremely inspirational figure that I had never heard of before my book club picked this for its next read. I am a wimpy casual hiker, and the kind of fortitude and courage that this must have taken - for a woman at SIXTY SEVEN - is just mind blowing to me. I am SUCH a planner, and all these books about people who just like show up with a pair of jeans and a shower curtain to hike t This was overall really good! I listened to the audio and I don’t regret that format choice.

Grandma Gatewood is an extremely inspirational figure that I had never heard of before my book club picked this for its next read. I am a wimpy casual hiker, and the kind of fortitude and courage that this must have taken - for a woman at SIXTY SEVEN - is just mind blowing to me. I am SUCH a planner, and all these books about people who just like show up with a pair of jeans and a shower curtain to hike thousands of miles boggle my mind, seriously.

You really root for Gradma Gatewood, both on her trek but also in the flashbacks to her earlier life with her TERRIBLE abusive husband. Major trigger warnings for violence against women and sexual assault.

I did have some specific quibbles with the book, including:

-The writer really likes Dramatic! Cliff-hanger! Chapter Endings! Like you can hear the dun-dun-DUN!!!!! music in the background as he reads “What she didn’t know is that it would almost cost her...HER LIFE.” Dun dun DUUUUUNNNN!!!! So. A littttttle over the top melodramatic for me there. I rolled my eyes a bit.

-The pacing was really good for the first 2/3rds of the book - the story of her hike was interwoven with her life as a young woman, young bride, young mother and that interweaving was really successful - whenever it transitioned from one to the other I would be like NOOOO but it was a good hook to keep me interested.

However.

At about the 2/3rd mark this stops being a feature. The bulk of the story has been told, and there are no more flashbacks. And this is where the story just felt a little...frittered. Like it didn’t quite know what it wanted to do. It just lost steam a bit, which was a shame.

There’s also a bit of one of these later chapters were the author is taking parts of Grandma Gatewood’s hikes with his wife and I just wanted to scream NO DUDE, I’M NOT HERE FOR YOUR HIKES, because I was not. This book was essentially a biography - why are you inserting yourself into it all of a sudden? It was jarring and just...not really necessary.

Despite these quibbles, this was an inspirational read that was worth the time. ...more

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Nov 01, 2017 Amanda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: first-reads

Growing up in Georgia, I did quite a few day hikes of portions of the Appalachian Trail in Georgia and North Carolina. I, however, had never heard of Grandma Gatewood. At the age of 67, she hiked the Appalachian Trail by herself and with minimal gear. She went on to complete a thru-hike two more times. This book retraced her first thru-hike using her journals and stories about her from that time. It’s very well-researched and detailed. Grandma Gatewood is a bold, inspiring woman, and I’ll think ...more

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Nov 10, 2014 Anastasia rated it really liked it

Shelves: class-issues, womens-issues, memoirbio, non-fiction, historical, 2014

This book is a lot more straight-forward than, for example, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, but it's about a similar topic. In 1955, a 67-year-old woman finally has her abusive husband out of her life, her 11 children are all married and off on their own, and she's found time to prepare for a 2000 mile hike through the Appalachians. Emma Gatewood is no "pantywaist" and you will be amazed, when you read of her efforts, that someone her age (and gender) and in that time, not only did pull this off but also ...more

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