The End and the Beginning, KJ Holdom’s debut novel, is based on the true story of a fourteen-year-old boy’s experience fleeing a Hitler youth camp in the final days of the Second World War.
Max Bernot’s parents, Anton and Marguerite, do their best to shield Max and his sister, Anna, from Nazi violence, but in late 1944, their beloved godfather is executed in their garden by the SS. Max is shipped off to a Hitler Youth Camp in Bavaria but escapes when he is called to fight for the Volkssturm and undertakes a perilous journey to return home and tell his mother the truth about his godfather’s murder.
‘A heartbreaking, beautifully told story. . . A sad, poignant tale of two young boys caught up in Hitler’s machine, risking their lives to get away from the panic of the last days of World War II. K. J. Holdom has crafted a stunning story of this time, brilliantly weaving dual time periods and the tragic consequences when families are torn apart.’ Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
‘The care Holdom has taken with this story is obvious. Her first contact with Edmund’s story was back in 2015, and in 2018 she worked on the novel for the Master of Creative Writing at the University of Auckland; she won that year’s Wallace Foundation Prize for best manuscript’, writes John Prins in Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books.
