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
Tag Archives: art
Melting Butter, Hot Rolls
By now, we’ve settled into a string of days, weeks, maybe months, of my work folding into my daughter’s life at home. I work; she does whatever passes for virtual high school. I drink coffee. She eats trail mix. She’s … Continue reading
What’s Here
In a wet, raw snowfall, I lean against a maple tree behind the high school and talk on the phone. It’s mid-afternoon, and I don’t see a single person. I’m clearing my head after a work conference with Skype. Skype, … Continue reading
Teenagers Recite Poems
Reluctantly, my daughter drags herself to a required high school poetry recitation. While I chat with parents I haven’t seen in ages, I see her laughing with a boy she’s known since third grade. Adolescents and poetry — how fun! … Continue reading
Bright Lights, Sparkly City
This stepping out of the nest thing? Wow, has the internet changed the world from my 20th-century youth. Via I-phone, my rural Vermont daughters rented their first solo AirBnb in Maine, to check out a college. My older daughter texts: … Continue reading
June — and More June
On the first glorious day of summer, my daughters are on Lake Champlain, walking along a causeway in this enormous lake. The day holds that nearly unbelievable deep green. Walking down to the diner to meet someone, I keep marveling. Just … Continue reading
Lying on the Grass…
After a less-than-harmonious game of croquet, I lie back on the grass. Overhead, a rainbow. All this day, toiling away at things that may or may not matter…. and in this pause, a rainbow? Makes me wonder what else I … Continue reading
Love Of
For no other reason except sheer pleasure, magnetic poetry reemerged in our lives…. And sometimes one sentence is enough.
Gold Smudge
My work these days reflects the weather’s dreariness — grant-writing — work I implicitly believe I should feel jazzed and excited about — and maybe I will, maybe I’ll get there, but grants so often feel like closed doors, of no … Continue reading
Sacred Spring
T. S. Eliot who famously wrote April is the cruelest month did not live in Vermont, where we have much crueler seasons. Like January. Yesterday, on my way from work to a grant-writing workshop, I returned home and changed from a … Continue reading
Rapture
Everyone was outside today. In all her golden beauty, Spring returned. I left my library door open, with a few patrons in charge, and walked down the dirt road to post a sign about state reps coming to visit the … Continue reading
