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: home
Things May Start….
So long, 2020. 2020 might not have been the brightest year on record, but then, say, 1944 might not have been all that rosy, either. 2020 became the year when our house finally became a home. Three years ago, I … Continue reading
Laughter
Pandemic notwithstanding, the car I’m selling needs to be inspected. Since who the heck wants to talk through masks, I call the mechanic where I’ve left this car for a week or so. What’s a week, anyway? The soft-spoken mechanic, … Continue reading
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
Marvelous May
Vermont May is a fairytale world — brilliant spring flowers, black manure, green grass — and, this year, the strange lurking demon of coronavirus. I’ve lived in New England for most of my life, and yet every year, spring never … Continue reading
Heading Home
One week into virtual school, into complete telecommuting for work — save those phone calls. The world, however, is not virtual, but wholly real, even more connected. Always awake and working first in our house, I fold my laptop shut … Continue reading
Jan Thaw
Rain pours. My daughters return, full of excitement of the ocean, of staying in a city, of a friend, and — for my younger daughter — driving around with my brother, stepping into his cool life. They have brought me … Continue reading
Home
Nearly two years ago we moved into our house — from the house where my daughters had lived their whole lives. Now, two years in, this new-to-us 100-year-old house, the house has morphed into home, with a particular shade of … Continue reading
End of July, Postcard From Hardwick, VT
Until she was 18, my older daughter lived on a dead-end dirt road, surrounded by mixed hardwood forest, dense conifers along the house’s northern boundary. Walk ten minutes from our house now — all right, maybe six minutes — and … Continue reading
Train Trip
Four summers ago, my family planned an Amtrak journey from Vermont to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in what would be the longest family trip of our girls’ childhood. That summer trip evolved into an illustration of that Robert Burns’ line … Continue reading
Hardwick Postcard #1: Start Here
The front steps from our yard to the street reflect a time when people walked more. These days, the walkers in town are mainly kids and adults who, for one reason or another, don’t drive. When I closed on the … Continue reading
