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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
Category Archives: homesteading
Train Trip
Four summers ago, my family planned an Amtrak journey from Vermont to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in what would be the longest family trip of our girls’ childhood. That summer trip evolved into an illustration of that Robert Burns’ line … Continue reading
Interlude of Laughing
Camping on the shore of Lake Champlain this weekend with three enthusiastic 13-year-old girls, we did summer staying-on-an-island things — we biked and we swam for hours (and I mean hours). We walked on the breakwater at sunset. The loons woke … Continue reading
Define Our Life Thus
Walking home through the cemetery fields, I noticed how brown the grass is — pretty much withered. That’s a particularly beautiful walk, high enough up above the village that I can see how Hardwick lies in a narrow valley along … Continue reading
And At Last….
Rain. …. Last weekend, driving to the other side of Vermont, I pulled over and read the Gazetteer to navigate through back roads. My daughter leaned forward from the backseat and asked, in complete seriousness, Are you actually reading a map? Indeed, … Continue reading
Mid-July… Slow Down The Days
The summer’s so brief and nearly unbearably beautiful in Vermont that I believe we stock up these days for the monotone of winter ahead. Maybe it’s different for families who travel a lot, who possess the luxury of multiple vacations, … Continue reading
A Postcard From Vermont…
…. might include a redwing blackbird suddenly rising from the stream behind the post office as you emerge from the weed-lined path with your brass key. The bird’s feathers hold the hue of burned-out embers. Or a crumpled Bud Lite … Continue reading
Kid and Cat Hanging Out
With both my daughters in their teens now, I spend a stupid amount of time thinking over what makes our lives, what fills our days, how has their childhoods unwound? Yesterday, looking up from my laptop at the kitchen table, … Continue reading
