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“Unstitched is riveting, compassionate, topical, and one of the best books I’ve read this year. Stanciu, in beautiful prose, takes on the impact of the opioid epidemic on a small Vermont town with the gusto and suspense of a fine mystery novel, and the empathy that only a truly fine observer of the human condition could muster. Highly recommended.”
— Thomas Christopher Greene, author of The Headmaster’s Wife and The Perfect Liar, Founding President of Vermont College of Fine Arts -
“Unstitched should be mandatory reading. It is a heartbreaking, raw, tender and revelatory look at addiction and its pervasive grip on ourselves, our families, our communities, and our rural towns. It is also a sublimely written narrative of transformation, vulnerability, discovery and love. This book undid me as I read—taking me into the heart of suffering, revealing my own habits, biases and fears—and then it gathered those pieces together and braided them into something new: a vision of hope, connection, possibility and healing for us all. Stanciu’s courage, generosity, curiosity and gorgeous words are the very best of guides.”
— Robin MacArthur, author of Heart Spring Mountain and Half Wild 
Tag Archives: writing fiction and craft
This Brief Place
These few days, we’re staying in a house without a clock, which makes me realize just how much of my life is sewn together by those magic hands. When my daughters were tiny, and I was mostly home with them, … Continue reading
How You Know Yourself
Watching the Olympic swimmers, my daughters wondered what went through the swimmers’ heads while they spent endless hours practicing their watery strokes. Intense concentration, or sometimes a grocery list? I imagine that must be way they know the world, I … Continue reading
Seeing & Writing
A rare epiphany today. Sitting in on a grade school math class, I listened to children figure strategies to determine the precise number between 28 and 43. Like that, I saw in the sunny classroom the mistaken path I’d taken … Continue reading
Unfolding Fern
I’m reading tonight at the Hartland Pubic Library, in Hartland, Vermont. Here’s a paragraph from my essay about writing this novel: From the opening sentence, the book arcs as a metaphorical unfolding of a fiddlehead, from youth’s smallness to the … Continue reading
