Walking with Beth unfolds in a series of short, intimate “conversations” that took place during three years of weekly walks prompted by my passage into 70—which coincided with Beth’s 100th birthday. We talked about everything—friendship between women, the deepening pandemic, countering with strength the inevitable weakening of our bodies, our pasts and our future, and the passions that keep us going through life’s least understood and most unwelcome passage.
“We all need a passion that is our own,” Beth says. “How can we navigate a journey that pushes and pulls at us as hard as life does, unless we can imagine?”
Published by: Random House Canada
Publish Date: September 23, 2025
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“In this post, we’ll be hearing from Canadian author Merilyn Simonds. She shares with us her inspirations, describes her writing process, and gives us a sneak peek into her next work in progress!”
“It started with a walk. Now these women...are ‘soul friends’” »
“A Recent Conversation: Merilyn and Beth” »
Listen on Spotify or Apple or read the transcript
“This book resists easy categorization. It is neither a straightforward biography of Beth nor a conventional memoir by Simonds herself. Instead, it blends the two into something more fluid: a hybrid of personal essay, oral history, and philosophical vignette.The premise is deceptively simple: two women—one in her seventies, the other a centenarian—meet weekly to walk, talk, and reflect. Yet within that simplicity lies a deeply considered meditation on friendship, aging, mortality, and the meaning we build between ourselves and others over time.
The episodic, walk-based framework mirrors the ebb and flow of conversation, and its lack of a conventional arc reinforces the idea that friendship is not about climaxes but about the steady accumulation of shared experience. For reflective readers, this is a gift.”
– Wayne Ng, Ottawa Review of Books
“Walking with Beth is wholly immersive. I felt like I was walking alongside them, or eavesdropping on their intimate conversations. No subject is out of bounds, no thoughts or feeling dismissed.”
– Jessica Foley, The Kingstonist
“Simonds is poignant in articulating that Beth, her friend, is her “last guide into the future”. That phrase was how I was led into the depths of “Walking with Beth.” In sediments of thought that felt chipped away and laid out carefully for the reader, I walked also with Simonds and Beth in one of the most terrifying elements of a writer’s life, not being able to control the ending of your own story: “I am a writer. I’m used to determining the plot. What confounds me about dying is that I will have no say in the end of this story.”
– Sara Hailstone sarahailstone.com/book-reviews/walking-with-beth
“The book meanders like a bubbling brook through their life stories, their interests, their open air visits (due to Covid) and their many phone calls over the winter months when Merilyn and her husband are in Mexico. And like a brook, there are moments when it races over rocks and others when it settles into a quiet pond.
I found this book a delicious read and recommend it for its interest and ultimately for its serenity.”
– Edith Cody-Rice, editor, The Millstone
Merilyn Simonds’s gentle, lyrical prose is like a whispered invitation into the most intimate of friendships—that between women of one generation and the next. Each remarkable in her own right, these two women fearlessly, yet tenderly, broach the satisfactions, fears, joys and even humour of aging. A wonderful contemplation.
– Michelle Good, author of Five Little Indians
Walking with Beth is a treasure chest of a book - the pages brim with glittering details, memories, and contemplations about the bond between two extraordinary “soul-friends”. Simonds explores ageing, connection, and the power of family and community with a poetic grace that is unparalleled in this moving meditation on a friendship between two remarkable and unforgettable women.
– Suzette Mayr, author of the Giller-winning The Sleeping Car Porter
Click on the image above to start the gallery slideshow.
Beth (left) at two, pouring tea for invisible friends. Merilyn at three, watering her grandmother’s garden. Tea and gardens are still their greatest pleasures—passions that last a lifetime.
