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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: photography
Age 13
My 13-year-old returns from her travels slightly shifted, changed in a perceptible way. She’s tasted a bit of the world cracked open. The younger sister, she’s now taking steps — err, leaps — into her own life. Who am I, and … Continue reading
Age 19
Oh, ode to June in all her lovely greenery. Remember being 19-years-old? Remember desire, desire, desire? The summer river. It’s happy to walk across it. My hands with zori sandal. —Buson
Three Quarters Through the Night
It’s a bird-eat-bird world the young woman with a hawk on her arm tells the kids in my library. The kids ask question after question, from Why is the bird’s head bobbing up and down to Why is that little screech owl in such a … Continue reading
Moonrise: a Great Gift
My daughter, up late, says, I’m going out to look at the moonrise. One long skinny band of cloud bends across the nightsky, luminescent with moonlight. The moon rises amber. My daughter runs into the house for her sister. The three of … Continue reading
Walls of Blossoms
One of the pieces of work I picked up this spring involved the famous CDC-Kaiser Permanente study about Adverse Childhood Experiences — fascinating, but not an uplifting read. This study, not surprisingly, recorded that one way to break the cycle of … Continue reading
My Thieving Ways
We sleep to peepers’ songs with the windows open, waking in the cool mornings. The days are so long and light-filled that we’re out late, sometimes with gardening projects, sometimes kicking a soccer ball or just wandering around. Behind the … Continue reading
Lilacs!
Every morning these days, my daughter and I look to see if the lilacs have opened. Today, today. Their scent reminds me of some of the best things: early childhood, summertime dinners on the grass, the return of spring. a … Continue reading
