Grandma Gatewood's Walk

I enjoyed the recounted walk(s), how primary sources like interviews, correspondence and journal entries, become a cohesive narrative of Emma's experience. I understand the inclusion of times from Emma's life before the walk to acquaint the reader with her, but the amount of time spent on her experiencing an abusive relationship, though it did take up a large portion of her life, the pacing of it, perhaps to build tension, when we're taking about a real person who experienced abuse, even without grisly details, still feels gratuitous. And speaking of gratuitous, maybe it's my recent read of the Appalachian Trail A Biography, but there seemed to be a lot of digressions that felt superfluous to actually telling either Emma's story or the story of her walk specifically. I have a feeling this could have been an engaging 100 page book about her struggles both on and off the trail without the filler. Not certain the addition of the author's own trail moments and talks with one of her descendants added to versus dragged out the message.  Given how often the author felt the need to discuss larger historical events going on simultaneously with her original trail walk, it felt a bit like he was sidelining the main narrative, like he didn't think her story was interesting enough to stand on its own. 🫤 
⚠️Domestic abuse, physical abuse, SA