Where the Heart Is

Novalee Nation (Natalie Portman), is a pregnant, superstitious, uneducated 17-year-old who has lived her entire life in a trailer. With the exception of her boyfriend Willie Jack Pickens (Dylan Bruno), her baby's father, she's all alone in the world with very little money of her own. On the drive from their current home in Tennessee to Bakersfield, California, where they planned to move, Willy Jack abandons Novalee in the small town of Sequoyah, Oklahoma and she ends up squatting in the town's Walmart. As her stay continues, she's befriended and assisted by various townsfolk: recovering alcoholic Sister Husband (Stockard Channing); nurse and single mother Lexie Coop (Ashley Judd), who names her children after snack foods; Walmart's contract photographer Moses Whitecotten (Keith David); and temporary librarian Forney Hull (James Frain), an academically-brilliant man originally from New England. As much as they help Novalee, she profoundly affects them as each deals with an issue that keeps them from a truly-fulfilling life. Forney ends up falling in love with Novalee, who feels that she must make a decision of how she can best help him; she's assisted in this by an unlikely source.