Ben Montgomery Books

"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."--

32. Independence -- 33. Spotlight -- 34. Discovery -- 35. Return to the Rock -- 36. All That Is Changed -- 37. Medals -- 38. Friends of Friends -- 39. Carville -- 40. Old Fears -- 41. Crusader -- 42. Fallen -- 43. Controversy -- 44. Fences -- 45. Walk Alone -- 46. Praise -- 47. Bureaucracy -- 48. Sisters -- 49. Deportation -- 50. California -- 51. Sunset -- 52. Disappear -- 53. I Am Still Alive -- 54. Anonymous -- Acknowledgments -- Bibliography -- Index -- Back Flip: About the Author -- Back Cover

Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the story of a Texas man who, in 1931, set out to walk backwards around the world.