Billie Letts book Where the Heart Is published in 1995 is powerfully raw and emotionally compelling.

We follow the journey of Novalee Nation who’s always been unlucky with the number sevens. Novalee is seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty seven pounds overweight, and traveling to Bakersfield, California from Tennessee with her boyfriend Willy Jack Pickens in a beat up car with a hole in the middle of the floor and she loses her only pair of shoes so when she spots a Wal-Mart she tells Willy Jack she needs to stop to get shoes. He gives her 10$. When Novalee comes back Willy Jack is gone. This is how she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma with just $7,77 to her name and with nowhere to stay, she lives inside this Wal-Mart until after the birth of her daughter Americus.

On her first day, Novalee meets three special people: Sister Thelma Husband, a blue haired scripture quoting woman who becomes her surrogate mother; Moses Whitecotton, a wise, elderly black gentleman and photographer who acts as her grandfather; and Benny Goodluck, a boy who basically becomes her younger brother.

The majority of the book focuses on Novalee and Americus and the roots they put down in Sequoyah. Letts characters are so genuine the sense of community Novalee finds leaps of the pages making it all but impossible to put the book down. The first time Novalle meets Forney Hull, the town librarian, their connection starts off on the wrong foot but the way their relationship blossoms becomes an integral plot line for the book. And her new best friend Lexie Coop, Letts shows us true strength of character in how these two women support each other through all the highs and lows of their lives.

Weaved into their story is that of Willy Jack and how he strives to make it in the country music business and how Novalee fears he will come back and take Americus away from her.

The interactions between all characters are authentic, heartfelt, even if at times bittersweet. A true 5 stars read.