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: mothering
Antidote
A photograph of my daughter and her friend is on a Good Citizen poster. What the heck does that mean, she asks? Who’s a good citizen? I drag up my standard answers: that history matters, that good fortune doesn’t equate with good … 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
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
Fleeting World
Last night, in the dark, I walked behind the barn and closed the chickens’ little door to keep out marauders. The golden hen was on the step inside the door, her little head tucked down into her feathers. I sunk … Continue reading
Tall Daughters
I ask my daughters if they’d mind going to Burlington on a late rainy afternoon. Heck, yeah. This proposal isn’t like asking a daughter to bury a garden fence to keep the woodchuck out. Less than two weeks remain before … Continue reading
Journeys, More Journeys
Near the end of the last century — which really wasn’t all that long ago — my then-boyfriend and I spent a lot of time driving around the country. We were so young, and time seemed like an endless well … Continue reading
Zeke, the New Friend
My 12-year-old returns from the southwest with the story of a bobcat who slept in the raingutter in her grandparents’ roof. She’s worried about the wild cat, who she thinks is too thin, unlike her own glossy, well-fed kittens. The … Continue reading
Separate Travels
When I was a new parent, I mistakenly searched for our family life to even out. Oh, so this is what being a mother is like — as if our family would steady into evenness. Maybe family life does work that … Continue reading
