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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
Tag Archives: #amwriting
Bright Spot
There’s nothing like a carful of laughing girls to whisk away despair. While the girls skied, I walked down to Big Hosmer Lake and sunk my hand in its cold water, thinking of my older daughter at 12 and how … Continue reading
A Few Minutes
When my brother was learning how to ride a bike, he started at the neighbors’ cement step, leapt up on the banana seat that was too high for him, wavered across our scraggly lawn until he banged into the side … Continue reading
And Even Heavier Lifting….
Not two white knights, but two women in Subarus showed up at my house last night to move cardboard boxes of books, wrap dishes, pull pictures from walls. My troops arrived, complete with olive bread and cheese, with enthusiasm and … Continue reading
Bluer Than Blue
Last evening, as dusk threaded in slowly, the 11-year-old and I played leisurely games of croquet, stepping around the blooming Siberian quills we planted late last fall. They flower in profusion over the lower leach field, whereas the other bulbs, … Continue reading
Adversity, the Inner Life, and Childrearing
Nowhere in the miasma of contemporary parenting lit have I ever read my dad’s adage from when I was a child: Adversity builds character. Enough, my siblings and I used to moan; we have enough character. In the same vein, in … Continue reading
August, 2016, Vermont
11-years-old. Hair sun-bleached. Eyes on the bike route. Hungry for mocha mud ice cream. Evening breeze — water is slapping against the legs of a blue heron. – Yosa Buson
Girl with Confidence
My 11-year-old daughter woke up this morning, searched for a particular pair of shorts, and ran down our dirt road. She ran for the first time beyond the road’s well-travelled end and down the narrower section, where woods and wild … Continue reading
