The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Are some authors paid by the word?  This book had an interesting story with strong characters, but the writing seemed very drawn out and wordy.  Maybe if the book had ended when my Kindle only said 50%, I would have been happier.  If you pick this up expecting Eat, Pray, Love, you'll be disappointed.  This is historical fiction, and I'm sure Gilbert did a ton of research prior to her writing.  And maybe she felt that she needed to weave each fact she learned into the plot somehow.  OK, I'll confess that I did like the first half of the book where we meet Alma and her family. And yes, there was quite a bit of detail about mosses and masturbation.  (Bet those two topics haven't been covered in too many other books.)  But overall it was a long book that didn't need to be that long.  -June