Where the Heart Is oddly mixes heart-warming vignettes and surprising, brutal violence. When she goes into labor and delivers her baby there, however, Novalee learns that sometimes it's not so bad to depend on the kindness of strangers-especially if one of them happens to be Sam Walton, the superchain's founder. For the next two months, Novalee surreptitiously makes her home in the Wal-Mart, sleeping there at night, exploring the town by day. Fortunately, the Wal-Mart parking lot is the Sequoyah equivalent of a town square, and within hours Novalee has met three people who will change her life: Sister Thelma Husband, a kindly eccentric Benny Goodluck, a young Native American boy and Moses Whitecotton, an elderly African American photographer.

'She'd had a bad history with them, starting with her seventh birthday, the day Momma Nell ran away with a baseball umpire named Fred.' Still, finding herself alone and penniless in Sequoyah, Oklahoma is enough to make even someone as inured to ill fortune as Novalee want to give up and die. Not that hard luck is anything new to Novalee, who is 'seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight-and superstitious about sevens. Her ne'er-do-well boyfriend, Willie Jack Pickens, abandons her in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart and takes off on his own, leaving her with just 10 dollars and the clothes on her back. Film rights sold to 20th Century Fox.A funny thing happens to Novalee Nation on her way to Bakersfield, California. Letts's wacky characters are depicted with humor and hope, as well as an earnestness that rises above the story's uneven conceits, resulting in a heartfelt and gratifying read. Meanwhile, Willy Jack, an aspiring musician, gets a shot at the big time before hitting bottom and realizing what he's left behind.

Sequoyah's one-woman welcoming committee, Sister Husband, takes them in cultured librarian Forney Hull takes a shine to them photographer Moses Whitecotton encourages Novalee's raw talent for photography by teaching her all he knows Lexie Coop, who has a huge appetite for food, diet fads and the wrong men, befriends her and legendary Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton gives her a job.

Happily, the community reaches out to Novalee and baby Americus. With nowhere to turn, she cleverly conceals herself within the store, keeping careful accounts until giving birth to the ``Wal-Mart baby'' turns her into a local celebrity. Leaving behind a trail of foster homes in Tennessee trailer parks to live in a real house with her boyfriend, Willy Jack Pickens, Novalee instead finds herself abandoned in front of a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Okla. For 17-year-old Novalee Nation, seven months pregnant, the phrase ``home is where your history begins'' has a special meaning. Readers immersed in the offbeat world of Letts's lively, affecting first novel will forgive its occasional forced quirkiness.

Where the heart is by billie letts