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
Category Archives: motherhood
Running Icicles
Birds are singing this morning when I step out on the back deck, and walk barefoot to the edge of the covered porch to see the blue layers of mountains and valley, the gray clouds from horizon to horizon, thin … Continue reading
Midwinter Mail
On a day when winter seems determined to seal over our house in a re-emergence of the Ice Age, the mailbox yields something interesting besides the usual jumble of instant recycling. My daughters collected the mail and left it on … Continue reading
Why Read?
February — surely the freaking longest month of the year in Vermont. Unable to endure the unremittingness of winter, I’ve taken over the couch with my laptop and Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive. Unableto tell my friends and library patrons about … Continue reading
Sunny Sunday
We’re in the February funk, with every family I know sick in one variation or another and a silly amount of snow and ice. Wealthier Vermont families make plans to fly elsewhere, the rest of us reveling in the days of … Continue reading
Postcard From the Edge of Snowland
10 degrees out when I head to the post office. In a sort of collective ah, screw it to concerns about global warming, many of the cars around town simply keep running—some, no doubt, to keep drivers’ toes warmish, others simply to … Continue reading
Birthing Day
Twenty years ago, I labored to bring my daughter into this world. Childbirth parts the scrim over our mundane lives, parts the clouds of our everydayness. Childbirth is just so much. The day descended into darkness, and yet I labored, the … Continue reading
Living the Dream—With Pie
Twenty years ago, I was about to cross over into motherhood. I was incredibly curious to see my baby’s face, to meet this brand-new person who had been growing and swimming within me for nine months. Eventually, she was born … Continue reading
