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“With vivid and richly textured prose, Brett Ann Stanciu offers unsparing portraits of northern New England life well beyond sight of the ski lodges and postcard views. The work the land demands, the blood ties of family to the land, and to each other, the profound solitude that such hard-bitten lives thrusts upon the people, are here in true measure. A moving and evocative tale that will stay with you, Hidden View also provides one of the most compelling and honest rural woman's viewpoint to come along in years. A novel of singular accomplishment.”
– Jeffrey Lent“Early in the book, I was swept by a certainty of truths in Hidden View: that Stanciu knew the bizarre and fragile construction that people's self-deceptions can frame. And that she was telling, out in public, against all the rules, the heartbreaking story of far too many women I've known, at one time or another, who struggled to make their dreams come to reality in situations….
…(In Hidden View) the questions of loyalty to person, commitment to dreams, and betrayal of the helpless are as vivid as the flames in the sugarhouse, as sweet and dangerous as the hot boiling maple sap on its way to becoming valuable syrup.
There's so much truth in this book that at some point, it stops being "fiction" and stands instead as a portrait, layered, complex, and wise. The Vermont that we love, the farms that we treasure, the children we nurture are fully present.”
– Kingdom Books, Beth Kanell"Stanciu is a Vermonter's writer. Anyone who loves the landscape and language of Vermont will be drawn into this story, but her writing holds a universal appeal, too, and rings true with the language and landscape of the human heart and mind as well. The characters in Hidden View are people you're going to think about, and care about, long after the book is read."
– Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, AS LONG AS THERE ARE MOUNTAINS
Author Archives: Brett Ann Stanciu
Elementary School Literature
On my wedding invitations, I printed a line from Robert Frost, and a guest, mistaking Carl Sandburg for crusty Frost, gave us a collection of Sandburg’s poems. I woke this frosty morning thinking of a poem we read aloud in … Continue reading
Balmy Days (Yet)
This autumn gives us day after day of warmth, and while the days’ length dwindles, the light oddly expands as the branches shake down their leaves, opening up the landscape around our house and on the distant mountains, too. The … Continue reading
October, Vermont
This has been a terrible week in Vermont news, involving brutal violence against young women, their mothers, and their children. I don’t usually write about violence and domesticity, for a very raw reason: I am one of those women who … Continue reading
Light
On a late afternoon, I walked out of the Montpelier Library and down the street. The trees along the street were shedding their pale yellow leaves in a balmy, golden light; the sidewalks were busy with children, the afternoon commute … Continue reading
Round and Round
Autumn is my Proust’s cup of tea, recollecting for me all those childhood afternoons I walked home from elementary school, scuffing through knee-piles of fallen leaves, as they crumbled and broke, releasing their rich humusy scent. Each morning, my 12-year-old … Continue reading
Wide Wingspan
As a kid, I believed bald eagles were in the same otherworldly category as unicorns: other than in a picture, I never imagined seeing these enormous birds. Today, I walked towards my girls in the car, all of us in … Continue reading
Small Find
Rain unearthed a tiny toy from the cotoneaster’s soil I planted a few weeks ago – a plastic white ram smaller than the length of my thumb. The soil’s sandy here, loamier on the house’s southern side where an immense … Continue reading
