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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
Age 13
My 13-year-old returns from her travels slightly shifted, changed in a perceptible way. She’s tasted a bit of the world cracked open. The younger sister, she’s now taking steps — err, leaps — into her own life. Who am I, and … Continue reading
Summer, Again
On this first day of summer, mock orange blooms beneath our bedroom windows — an enormous bush that nearly reaches to the second floor — its scent so sweet it’s nearly liquid. Yesterday, a day that perhaps reflects our summer … Continue reading
Age 19
Oh, ode to June in all her lovely greenery. Remember being 19-years-old? Remember desire, desire, desire? The summer river. It’s happy to walk across it. My hands with zori sandal. —Buson
Female House
The summer my second daughter was an infant, the season was particularly hot and sticky — at least in my memory it was. That summer I just didn’t do certain things — I washed clothes and probably even folded them, … Continue reading
One Year
Friday mornings find me in the Buffalo Mountain Co-op’s cooler, stocking Vermont milk, yogurt made just up the road, kimchi from ust down the road. What a feast these bottles of milk would be for our little cats, who lie … Continue reading
Evening Pause
Last night, just before dusk, I walked around gathering the croquet mallets and put them in the barn, before the predicted rain today. My daughter came out to fold towels thrown over the railings, and we listened to geese fly … Continue reading
Lady Lupine
Here’s a line from a children’s picture book — my younger daughter’s favorite — You must do something to make the world more beautiful. Last evening, I overhead the girls planning to spread lupine seeds gleaned from the flowers blooming before … Continue reading
