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: stories
Early Hours
In the night, rain thickens to snow. Wind has washed away yesterday’s balmy temperatures. The cats and I are awake hours before the girls, myself with that eternally running list and dialogue, the cats warm-pawed and hungry. Satiated with their … Continue reading →
Dinner
The December my youngest daughter was two, snow fell every day – some days just the merest trace of flakes; other days, it snowed and snowed and snowed. By New Year’s Eve, so much snow had accumulated on the porch and … Continue reading →
Specificity in Writing
Like many people I know, I cut my early reading teeth on Little House on the Prairie, and reading the new fictionalized version of Ma (er… Caroline) brings back the days when reading a chapter in a real, fat book … Continue reading →
Hey, Kid!
The other evening I walked by a kid in shorts and a t-shirt crouched down in the mess of road construction on Main Street. What the heck? He was about seven-years-old or so, his hands on a thick stake with … Continue reading →
Myriad Things
These summer days, I often work at home, awake and drinking coffee while the girls slumber, and the sun rises and slowly steams off the dew from our croquet patch, the garden, and the town’s rusted metal fence and cemetery … Continue reading →
Vermont Libraries
Yesterday, on my way to a state library conference, I exited I-89 and took a short-cut, trading an urban confluence along the Connecticut River for a winding dirt road. Library conference? Ho-hum, you’d think. Instead, Vermont’s department of libraries is … Continue reading →
Author-ity
With my sixth-grader’s basketball season’s schedule, I’ve been spending some working hours hidden on the elementary school’s back staircase, working at a child’s desk so old it has an inkwell hole. I love this old schoolhouse; dating to the first … Continue reading →
