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: joy
Wide Open Windows
Hallelujah! What I believed had permanently departed my patch of Vermont returned: sun! Warmth! Yesterday afternoon while I’m holed up in the Montpelier library, working, my daughter texts me, asking if she can open the house windows. Please? It’s hot. At … Continue reading
Simple Saturday
I make an error knitting a hat — I skip the beginning half of a cable round. Compensate for the error and hope it’s not apparent? Or unravel (again) and start over? Thus, the allure of craft — the potential … Continue reading
Joyful Interlude
A few years back, I told the man at the dump about an argument I’d had with my now ex. The old man always assessed what I had for garbage and recycling and then suggested what I should pay. Are you okay … Continue reading
Breakfast with a Stranger
On this Thanksgiving morning, a dream of our house burning wakes me. In the haze of my dream, I’m first insistent my daughters leave, their two cats found and taken to the neighbors. My laptop. Then there’s an odd pause, … Continue reading
Ode to the Miraculous Melon
And then there’s this: at the very end of Vermont’s summer months — August 27th, a day of jumbled work and bruised adult egos, a day of existential pondering, after a moonlit night when I consider my very genuine failings … Continue reading
And Grace….
When I attended Sunday School briefly as a child, I remember reading about the Resurrection in a paper booklet and studying an illustration of Christ standing in a white robe beside a boulder, his clean hands outstretched to a gape-mouthed … Continue reading
In my weekly commute to Burlington, some mornings I hit traffic, and some mornings I don’t. Today, waiting in a long line, I listened to Garrison Keillor read poetry. “Despair” by Billy Collins So much gloom and doubt in our … Continue reading
