Announced December 7, 1998
About the Book
Novalee Nation has always been unlucky with sevens. She's seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight — and now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, holding just $7.77 in change. An hour ago, she was on her way from Tennessee to a new life in Bakersfield, California. Suddenly, with all those sevens staring her in the face, she is forced to accept the scary truth: her no-good boyfriend Willy Jack Pickens has left her with empty pockets and empty dreams.
But Novalee is about to discover treasures hidden in Sequoyah — a group of disparate and deeply caring people, among them blue-haired Sister Thelma Husband, who hands out advice and photocopied books of the Bible...
Moses Whitecotton, the wise, soft-spoken, elderly black photographer eager to teach Novalee all he knows... and Forney Hull, the eccentric town librarian who hides his secrets — and his feelings — behind his world of books.
Novalee may be homeless and jobless, living secretly in a Wal-Mart, but she's beginning to believe she may have a future. Through all the touching and surprising adventures that lie ahead, she's going in the right direction.
Where the Heart Is puts a human face on the look-alike trailer parks and malls of America's small towns. It will make you believe in the strength of friendship, the goodness of down-to-earth people, and the healing power of love. And it will make you laugh and cry...every step of the way.
About the Author
Letts is the author of numerous highly acclaimed short stories and screenplays and was honored with the Walker Percy Award for Where the Heart Is. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband, Dennis, where she teaches creative writing at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
Favorite Books
I suppose that in some mysterious ways everything I've read has helped me find the voice that speaks in my work, but there are some that are vivid in my memory.
The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, taught me to listen to the rhythm of language.
In Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I learned about the gift of hope that can come from writing honestly about pain.
Flannery O'Connor's short stories made me believe I could write in the language of my Oklahoma culture and tell stories about the people I come from.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee showed me that storytelling can change people's lives.
And in her collection Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros gave me Salvador Late or Early, so powerful in its simplicity that I am humbled each time I read it.
Book Reviews
Novalee Nation, 17 and pregnant, finds herself stranded outside a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with $7.77 in her pocket and no one to turn to for help. This is an unlikely beginning for a humorous and hopeful novel, but that is just what this is. As she sits outside the store taking stock of her situation, plucky Novalee meets several of the town's more unusual inhabitants: Sister Husband, who presents her with a shop-worn welcome-wagon basket; black photographer Moses Whitecotton, who conveys to her the importance of a name for her unborn child; and Indian Benny Goodluck, who gives her a buckeye tree for good luck. These and other Sequoyah citizens rally around Novalee when she has her baby on the floor of Wal-Mart, and form the basis for this most enjoyable novel.
—From School Library Journal
Letts's debut novel concerns a pregnant teenage girl who finds a new life among the quirky inhabitants of a small town in Oklahoma.
— From Publisher's Weekly
Get more resources on Where the Heart Is, an Oprah's Book Club selection.
View the Complete Oprah's Book Club List.
Novalee Nation has always been unlucky with sevens. She's seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight — and now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, holding just $7.77 in change. An hour ago, she was on her way from Tennessee to a new life in Bakersfield, California. Suddenly, with all those sevens staring her in the face, she is forced to accept the scary truth: her no-good boyfriend Willy Jack Pickens has left her with empty pockets and empty dreams.
But Novalee is about to discover treasures hidden in Sequoyah — a group of disparate and deeply caring people, among them blue-haired Sister Thelma Husband, who hands out advice and photocopied books of the Bible...
Moses Whitecotton, the wise, soft-spoken, elderly black photographer eager to teach Novalee all he knows... and Forney Hull, the eccentric town librarian who hides his secrets — and his feelings — behind his world of books.
Novalee may be homeless and jobless, living secretly in a Wal-Mart, but she's beginning to believe she may have a future. Through all the touching and surprising adventures that lie ahead, she's going in the right direction.
Where the Heart Is puts a human face on the look-alike trailer parks and malls of America's small towns. It will make you believe in the strength of friendship, the goodness of down-to-earth people, and the healing power of love. And it will make you laugh and cry...every step of the way.
About the AuthorLetts is the author of numerous highly acclaimed short stories and screenplays and was honored with the Walker Percy Award for Where the Heart Is. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband, Dennis, where she teaches creative writing at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
Favorite Books
I suppose that in some mysterious ways everything I've read has helped me find the voice that speaks in my work, but there are some that are vivid in my memory.
The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, taught me to listen to the rhythm of language.
In Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I learned about the gift of hope that can come from writing honestly about pain.
Flannery O'Connor's short stories made me believe I could write in the language of my Oklahoma culture and tell stories about the people I come from.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee showed me that storytelling can change people's lives.
And in her collection Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros gave me Salvador Late or Early, so powerful in its simplicity that I am humbled each time I read it.
Book Reviews
Novalee Nation, 17 and pregnant, finds herself stranded outside a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with $7.77 in her pocket and no one to turn to for help. This is an unlikely beginning for a humorous and hopeful novel, but that is just what this is. As she sits outside the store taking stock of her situation, plucky Novalee meets several of the town's more unusual inhabitants: Sister Husband, who presents her with a shop-worn welcome-wagon basket; black photographer Moses Whitecotton, who conveys to her the importance of a name for her unborn child; and Indian Benny Goodluck, who gives her a buckeye tree for good luck. These and other Sequoyah citizens rally around Novalee when she has her baby on the floor of Wal-Mart, and form the basis for this most enjoyable novel.
—From School Library Journal
Letts's debut novel concerns a pregnant teenage girl who finds a new life among the quirky inhabitants of a small town in Oklahoma.
— From Publisher's Weekly
Get more resources on Where the Heart Is, an Oprah's Book Club selection.View the Complete Oprah's Book Club List.
Published 12/07/1998
