“While characters in other books are out getting married or divorced, Nancy Zafris’s characters are out stealing llamas and shepherding lepers. In her world, strangers connect in strange places and in strange, but meaningful ways. Zafris writes with deep compassion, nuance, and humor of the loneliness of human beings, of their despair and small triumphs. With perfect prose, she observes the world in ways that move the reader from the pleasure of surprise to the pleasure of recognition. The Home Jar reminds us what a small, good thing the short story is.”
–Lori Ostlund, The Bigness of the World

“This is a powerful collection by a fearless writer. Zafris skips effortlessly across state lines and international boundaries, exploring what goes both said and unsaid between people who care about each other. These are fugitive characters in the hands of an experienced storyteller, and the reader feels at home in these stories, no matter where Zafris takes us.”
–Caitlin Horrocks, This Is Not Your City

“Zafris is an abundantly talented writer.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“ Zafris writes prose so clean and strong we almost don’t notice the magic by which she renders the familiar strange, and the strange achingly familiar.”
–Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

“Like Flannery O’Connor herself, Nancy Zafris clearly believes that the short story is the best instrument we have to account for the often crooked, always condemned kind we are. A literary ‘Misfit,’ Ms. Zafris haunts America’s byways, bringing to heel the vain and the feckless, the self deceived and the heedless, the shallow-minded and the impossibly precious. Open The Home Jar at your own peril, friends: Its contents are under exceptional pressure.”
–Lee K. Abbott, All Things, All at Once

“These stories–beautiful, strange, unpredictable—are about the men and women who live in towns (and even countries) you’ve never heard of, who demonstrate your plane’s safety features and accept your parking garage tickets. Each sentence lands with bone-shattering strength and precision. Each character, no matter the gender or vocation or nationality, is granted not just dignity and texture but a compelling, enlivening rage. I loved this book.” –Holly Goddard Jones, The Next Time You See Me