Non­fic­tion

The End is the Begin­ning: A Per­son­al His­to­ry of My Mother

  • Review
By – July 7, 2025

Crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed writer and poet Jill Bialosky’s new book, The End is the Begin­ning, is a touch­ing biog­ra­phy of her moth­er, Iris Bialosky. Writ­ten in back­ward chrono­log­i­cal order, the book begins with Iris’s death toward the start of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, in March, 2020. She had been suf­fer­ing from mem­o­ry loss in an assist­ed care facil­i­ty and her death allowed the author the dis­tance to look back at var­i­ous piv­otal moments under a poet’s mag­ni­fy­ing glass to bet­ter under­stand the deep chal­lenges and wounds that Iris experienced. 

Bialosky high­lights Iris’s inspir­ing resilience as the matri­arch of a fam­i­ly of daugh­ters in spite of every­thing her fam­i­ly went through, includ­ing the dev­as­tat­ing, untime­ly death of two fam­i­ly mem­bers that for­ev­er altered the tra­jec­to­ry of Iris’s (and there­fore the author’s) life. 

The sud­den death of Iris’s hus­band, Milt, at age thir­ty caused Iris to spi­ral into depres­sion and face unfore­seen hard­ships, includ­ing hav­ing to raise her three young daugh­ters alone. Iris even­tu­al­ly remar­ried and gave birth to a fourth daugh­ter, Kim, who com­mit­ted sui­cide at age twen­ty-one. As Bialosky describes this shock­ing expe­ri­ence, read­ers must keep read­ing in order to learn more about Iris’s unsta­ble sec­ond mar­riage, and to under­stand the close con­nec­tion Iris and her youngest daugh­ter shared.

Bialosky fre­quent­ly won­ders about the impact of the 1950s on her mother’s well-being, how expec­ta­tions of moth­er­hood along with gen­der norms in that time peri­od influ­enced her to get mar­ried at a young age instead of pur­su­ing more edu­ca­tion and a career. Iris depend­ed on her hus­band and nev­er imag­ined being a sin­gle par­ent. The ghost of her children’s father left a hole in all their lives, dras­ti­cal­ly impact­ing their futures. 

The order­ing of events in this book is part of what makes it a stun­ning lit­er­ary work. By allow­ing read­ers to look back­ward and for­ward simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Bialosky helps us make sense of the bur­den of mem­o­ry while cre­at­ing empa­thy and understanding. 

Read­ers expe­ri­enc­ing famil­ial loss will find com­fort and con­nec­tion in the pow­er­ful sto­ries Bialosky shares about her moth­er, espe­cial­ly those read­ers who are becom­ing care­tak­ers for their own parents.

Jamie Wendt is the author of the poet­ry col­lec­tion Laugh­ing in Yid­dish (Broad­stone Books, 2025), which was a final­ist for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize in Poet­ry. Her first book, Fruit of the Earth (Main Street Rag, 2018), won the 2019 Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion of Press Women Book Award in Poet­ry. Her poems and essays have been pub­lished in var­i­ous lit­er­ary jour­nals and antholo­gies, includ­ing Fem­i­nine Ris­ing, Cata­ma­ran, Lilith, Jet Fuel Review, the For­ward, Minyan Mag­a­zine, and oth­ers. She con­tributes book reviews to the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She won third prize in the 2024 Reuben Rose Poet­ry Com­pe­ti­tion and won sec­ond prize for the 2024 Hol­loway Free Verse Award through the Illi­nois State Poet­ry Soci­ety. Wendt holds an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka Oma­ha. She lives in Chica­go with her hus­band and two kids. Fol­low her online at https://​jamie​-wendt​.com/ or on Insta­gram @jamiewendtpoet.

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