Walking with Beth
Conversations with My Hundred-Year-Old Friend
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Merilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us all: growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life.
In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she'd like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but entering what struck her as a mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Beth, a smart, vibrant woman who'd held a job until she was 99, lived on her own and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next?
During three years of weekly walks, the conversation between the two women only deepened, as they opened up about their heart-felt passions, the lingering influence of their pasts, and their hopes and fears for the future.
In Walking with Beth, Simonds shares these intimate exchanges, delving into corners of older women's lives that are rarely seen or spoken about so openly. As Simonds looks forward into a future that seems unknowable, Beth looks back, offering her experience in surviving the later-life blows that batter us all, and more importantly, her wisdom about how to enrich every passing day.
About this Author
MERILYN SIMONDS is author of twenty books, most recently Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay, an innovative memoir/biography of Lawrence, an extraordinary self-trained ornithologist who became one of Canada's greatest naturalists. Born in Winnipeg, Simonds grew up in small-town Ontario and Brazil. She published her first book in 1979 at the age of 29, and since then her work has been anthologized and published internationally in eight countries. She writes in a wide variety of genres--personal essay, memoir, travel, literary fiction (such as the novel The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice) and creative nonfiction, including The Convict Lover, which was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction. In 2017, Project Bookmark Canada installed a plaque on the site of the former Kingston Penitentiary rock quarry to honour the place of The Convict Lover in Canada's literary landscape.
Reviews
"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
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