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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
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
Neighbors
While my 12-year-old was turning cartwheels on the grass, I leaped over the fence last night into the cemetery and stepped between two enormous, fragrant hydrangeas, their blooms just beginning to brown and fade. My daughter followed me over the … Continue reading
School Rules
My teenager, tackling chemistry, doesn’t follow my advice to get some assistance with all those equations. Instead, she cheerfully informs me her teacher did some of her homework. I just asked, she said, and he just went ahead and did them. To … Continue reading
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
