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: photography
Garden of Eden — Er, Vermont
My 19-year-old shoots me a photo for an essay I’ve written and hands over her camera card. Scrolling through, I find this picture of her younger sister taken by my friend Jessica Ojala. With almost tactile precision, I remember tying … Continue reading
Interlude of Laughing
Camping on the shore of Lake Champlain this weekend with three enthusiastic 13-year-old girls, we did summer staying-on-an-island things — we biked and we swam for hours (and I mean hours). We walked on the breakwater at sunset. The loons woke … Continue reading
A Postcard From Vermont…
…. might include a redwing blackbird suddenly rising from the stream behind the post office as you emerge from the weed-lined path with your brass key. The bird’s feathers hold the hue of burned-out embers. Or a crumpled Bud Lite … Continue reading
Summer, 13
My 13-year-old daughter, after considerable thought, purchased in May a blow-up swimming floatie in the wedged shape of a piece of pizza. The only drawback, in her eyes, are two mushroom pieces on this pepperoni-and-green pepper pizza. For the $8, … Continue reading
These Unbroken Days
Nearly July, we’ve had rain, and we’ve had sun — an apt metaphor for life, I suppose. Early this morning when the sun spread its inimitable crimson across the horizon, and the cats stepped on my hands, reminding me gently … Continue reading
To water or not to water? The Vermont gardener question. With my sandy soil, I’m watering — a showery hymn to growth. One of the hottest and driest places I’ve ever been is Utah’s Hovenweep. A few years ago, my … Continue reading
Antidote
A photograph of my daughter and her friend is on a Good Citizen poster. What the heck does that mean, she asks? Who’s a good citizen? I drag up my standard answers: that history matters, that good fortune doesn’t equate with good … Continue reading
