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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: #humor
Community Bonding
Written with a finger on a muddy car door in Montpelier: Spring is here! Hooray! I mention this to my daughter at dinner, saying, I think a kid wrote this…. Why a kid? she asks. Why not a little old lady? … Continue reading
Hardwick, VT, Sign of Spring #2
A sign of spring, I suppose, is small-talking with the other parents on a slushy soccer field, watching our kids in a nordic ski relay. Sure, that’s spring in Vermont, borne with the usual good-humor of nordic ski families, and … Continue reading
Cold Spring
A lover I had for a very brief time complained I wasn’t good at accepting gifts. Pride, he noted. About that, he was right. And yet a life without pride in yourself and your actions? Lack pride and you become a muddied … Continue reading
Parking Lot Humor
A friend once remarked to me that my older daughter has a “very thin scrim” between her and the world. Last night, returning with the girls and their skis, we stopped at a supermarket in Waterbury and wandered through the … Continue reading
Hardwick Postcard #2: Community Notices
Outside Hardwick’s food co-op are two boards thumb-tacked with wind-tattered signs, the cultural postings of this small town – free community postings of library and school events, classes offered, a deadbeat father’s rambling missive to his family. I stand in the … Continue reading
Amazing Things
Years ago, when I was a board member at the Stowe Farmers’ Market, I stopped in at bookstore before a board meeting to buy a child’s small sticker book. Board meetings often ran three hours long; I had my four-year-old … Continue reading
