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: homeschooling
Sunday
Growing up in southern New Hampshire, the summer sky often skimmed over with smeary white humidity, and I spent a lot of my childhood summers reading library books on the cool front porch behind the trumpet vine. Our box fan … Continue reading
Spring Notes
Emptying boxes of recycling at the transfer station, I found a drawing of my daughter’s making, from a few years ago. In a shallow sea of mud, surrounded by the mighty clangor of trash-moving activity, seagulls pinwheeling overhead, I studied … Continue reading
Dirty Shoes
We’ve officially entered into the season of increasing darkness – not merely politically but because of the planet’s tilt. My teenager, home early from school, slouches at the kitchen table and moans about the gray. I advise her to head … Continue reading
The Town at Night
Driving through Hardwick, Vermont, last night, beneath a crescent moon, the 11-year-olds in the backseat playing a word game and clapping, the 17-year-old dreaming thoughtfully at the wheel, I marveled at how good Hardwick looks in the dark, the handful of … Continue reading
Non-Academic Grit
In my twenties, I made a decision which changed the course of my adult life: I left the academic world and threw in my (considerably small) fortune in agriculture. My former husband and I sugared for nearly twenty years, on … Continue reading
Early Evenings
Just when it seems like the gray may finally be settling in for months, it’s tamarack season. On my way to pay the yearly property taxes today, I realized those trees were rich gold. Then that amber, too, will pass, … Continue reading
October Snow…
…. is not my favorite. Too wet, too scant, and the hydrangea suffers. With enthusiasm, though, the children have dug into paper crafts and apple pie baking. My contribution to the household is vacuuming the ratty living room rug, spreading out … Continue reading
