My Book
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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
The Mind of Winter
Poet Wallace Stevens wrote: One must have a mind of winter/To regard the frost and the boughs/Of the pine-trees crusted with snow. In northern Vermont — thus far — the winter has been cold and dark and ice, scant on snow. When the sun … Continue reading
And So Begins… December
Sun in Vermont’s December? Sunday morning, we discovered perfect snowflakes scattered over the icy ground. This final month of the year always seems more shut in, filled with post-holiday and pre-holiday and holiday, with snow piling (although more ice than … Continue reading
Taxi Driver
I’m at the gas station, in the far back, where the light is out, filling diesel cans by the light of my iPhone, when an older woman pulls up and starts talking to me. Busy, busy, she was at work … Continue reading
One Day, Otherwise
A few drops of rain graced the very end of our walk yesterday afternoon. Later, our kitchen redolent with baking pies, rain hammered on the roof. I hope all my readers have many, many things to celebrate. Oddly enough, on … Continue reading
First Sledding
In the dusk, children screamed as they sledded down a hill — so screechingly at first I worried they were injured. When I stepped around the garage, though, two children in raggedy snowsuits were laughing at the foot of a … Continue reading
Red Star
I wake from what I suppose is a writer’s nightmare. Inexplicably, someone has altered the pages of the book I’m writing to emoijis — gibberish where I’ve labored so long to string together sense and beauty. Mid-November, and the nights … Continue reading
Rain, Sleet, Snow, Silence
Third snow day, and it’s only November. Driving from one side of the state to another, I travel through a landscape of gray — pavement, mountain — flanked by icy trees in that always questionable terrain around Bolton. Then — … Continue reading
