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: history
End of a Not-so-long-ago Terrible War
While cooking a dinner I’ve made for years — udon and broccoli and a spinach omelette — I listen to NPR and wonder, like any reasonable parent, what kind of world my daughters will live in when they’re my age. … Continue reading
Magic Trick
Like a great joke, a few more inches of snow arrived on April Fool’s Day. By afternoon, however, the day evolved to a breezy sunniness, brisk but radiant. I walked with writer Natalie Kinsey-Warnock to her car in the Woodbury … Continue reading
10,000 Years of Pollen: Storyline
An expert in New England’s ancient forests shares the story of taking a core sample from a pond not far from my library — easily within a few hours’ walk — and extracting 10,000-years-worth of planetary history. 10,000 years of … Continue reading
Wet Wool Memory
I buy my daughter a pomegranate, because she loves the fruit, because of the red it brings to our snowy Vermont landscape, and because Saroyan wrote about pomegranates. My parents did not buy pomegranates. As a kid growing up in … Continue reading
Studded Snows
What’s the one thing that makes Vermont winters survivable? Friends? Laughter? Knitting? A chicken roasting in the oven? Nope: snow tires. Driving to Burlington on a snowy Sunday morning to interview a young poet, I kept thinking, At least I bought … Continue reading
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
Local Wanders
When I lived on 100 acres in fairly rural Vermont, I didn’t imagine we’d change that story. 100 acres is a large chunk of land, and those 100 acres didn’t end at any boundary save a single dirt road along … Continue reading
This Old House
For years, I’ve been buying my daughters creemees in the summer and admiring a small, terribly neglected house across the road. With an exterior of stained glass windows and ornate eaves, I imagine the inside has extraordinary woodwork. Surrounded by … Continue reading
Rust
With so little snow and a great deal of sun, we spent some time walking through the neighbors’ fields today. When they bought the property, they dragged out all the abandoned farm machinery, the wheels and gears, and lumped … Continue reading
Spinning Planet
Almost immediately after a children’s play at the Craftsbury Library tonight, my daughters ran outside. Was it the weirdly warm December weather? The joy of seeing a long-time friend? I sat on the back porch slouched in a rocking chair, … Continue reading
