Where the Heart Is

Where the Heart Is is a 2000 American romantic drama film directed by Matt Williams and starring Natalie Portman, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, and Joan Cusack with supporting roles done by James Frain, Dylan Bruno, Keith David, and Sally Field. The screenplay, written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, is based on the best-selling 1995 novel of the same name by Billie Letts. The film follows five years in the life of Novalee Nation, a pregnant 17-year-old who is abandoned by her boyfriend at a Walmart in a small Oklahoma town. She secretly moves into the store, where she eventually gives birth to her baby, which attracts media attention. With the help of friends, she makes a new life for herself in the town. Plot Pregnant, 17-year-old Novalee Nation and her boyfriend, Willy Jack Pickens, are moving from Tennessee to California. In the car, Novalee puts Willy Jack's hand on her belly and asks him if he can feel "where the heart is". Disturbed, Willy Jack lies and then abandons Novalee at a Walmart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, when she went inside to use the restroom and gets some shoes, after losing them during the drive. With no money and nowhere to go, Novalee begins secretly living in the Walmart, hiding until after closing. She meets "Sister" Thelma Husband, the local welcome wagon, who gives her a buckeye tree, and photographer Moses Whitecotton. When the tree becomes sick, Novalee seeks help at the local library, where she meets the curt librarian Forney Hull. Forney is a brilliant and out of place man from the East coast. He had dropped out of college and become trapped in the blue collar town to take care of his mentally and physically unwell sister, Mary Elizabeth, the "real" librarian.