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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 1995, 357 pages
Paperback:
May 1998, 376 pages
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.
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.
Novalee Nation, seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight--and superstitious about sevens--shifted uncomfortably in the seat of the old Plymouth and ran her hands down the curve of her belly.
For most people, sevens were lucky. But not for her. 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. Then, when Novalee was in the seventh grade, her only friend, Rhonda Talley, stole an ice cream truck for her boyfriend and got sent to the Tennessee State School for Girls in Tullahoma.
By then, Novalee knew there was something screwy about sevens, so she tried to stay clear of them. But sometimes, she thought, you just can't see a thing coming at you.
And that's how she got stabbed. She just didn't see it coming.
It happened right after she dropped out of school and started waiting tables at Red's, a job that didn't have anything to do with sevens...
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