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: writing
Scars, Somewhere in November, 2020
Every morning, a hard frost sugarcoats our world. Before the snow falls in earnest, my daughter drives, logging in hours and experience with her driver’s permit. We head out one way and take a different road back home. Inadvertently, wandering, … Continue reading
Sunset, Skunk, State Police
Before I leave work yesterday afternoon, I stack piles of papers labeled with stickies in my scrawled handwriting — a roadmap for myself for the next day’s work. Outside, the sunset is crazy beautiful. I drive home, listening to VPR. … Continue reading
The Right Thing
On a walk my daughters and I often take in the evening, we pass a house where a little black cat trots out to meet us. The cat’s tail is bony, its nose white as if dipped into a saucer … Continue reading
The Long Haul
After work, it’s too dark to go running, and I’m home in a foul mood while my daughters cook dinner. While cleaning out a closet that afternoon, they discovered a box of photographs and claimed the photos were evidence there … Continue reading
Once in a Blue Moon
Saturday, we were at a jack o’ lantern walk at the elementary school where my youngest graduated a few years ago. Because it’s rural Vermont, it was dark, and everyone was spread out. I slipped away from the few kids … Continue reading
Asking for Good News
Every few days or so, a friend and I email back and forth, asking for good news. Occasionally, it’s utterly knock-it-out-of-the-park news — I finished this revision of my book — but more often the meaningful mundaneness of everyday life. … Continue reading
Laughter
Standing in the rain watching my daughter, behind the socially distanced spaced out row of spectators, I hear a sound through the downpour steadily pummeling my borrowed umbrella. It takes me a moment, but then I realize two women cozied … Continue reading
Worn Cleats
Feeding the wood stove before bed, my eyes catch on my daughter’s duct-taped cleats drying beside the wood stove. Two decades ago, I first became a mother to this girl’s older sister, and an accompanying stream of beloved things have … Continue reading
Hot Java
When my girls were little, I occasionally sang a few lines from an old song — just around the corner there’s a rainbow in the sky, so let’s all have another cup of coffee. For the record, neither daughter is … Continue reading
Pastimes
I wake before dawn thinking of shuffleboard and listen to the rain pattering. It’s Wednesday, and my high school daughter is home today. With high school in session two days a week, she’s patched together a strange schedule. Yesterday, she … Continue reading
