"These are stories with an extra voltage. Not only will they bring children from play and old men from the chimney-corner, but they will delight all who have a proper sense of a vanishing America, the America of the small independent farm with (sometimes) a Round Barn."
--Maynard Mack
"What I love in Jackson's energetic narrative is that she shows us functional people who know their own feelings. They love one another and their Wisconsin farm life. They practive kindness and openly despise sadism. Family members talk to each other about things that matter. Like any story-loving American I try to keep clear of both the cynical patter of sitcoms and the self-centered bleating of so much contemporary literature. What a joy to come across Jackson's cheerful, serious, funny, visceral scenes! When I finished reading Stories from the Round Barn I said to myself, 'Yes, I had almost forgotten. Our species is capable of joy and imagination and decency. And here's a handbook for us.'"
--Carol Bly, author of Letters from the Country
"An ingeniously devised round barn encircles the lives of an ordinary, extraordinary American family living through times that echo our own. The book casts a wide net and wants reading aloud in classrooms to encourage the young to gather their own family stories, while there's still time."
--Richard Peck, author of The Last Safe Place on Earth
"Jackson mixes biography and oral history into more than charming tale of a lost rural life. This engaging work of creative nonfiction places this unusual barn at the center of her family's dairy farm near Beloit, Wisconsin, and uses it as a place to view the hardship and danger--as well as the rich pleasures--of a fascinating history."
--Chicago Tribune
"When [W.J.] Dougan painted his cement silo with five 'Aims of This Farm'. . . . [t]he last aim was 'Life as Well as a Living.' In this heartfelt memoir, Jackson makes us see just what he meant."
--Publishers Weekly