Where the Heart Is is a novel written by Billie Letts, an American novelist and educator, and published in 1995. The novel reveals a story of Novalee Nation, a poor seventeen-year-old girl, who is pregnant. Her mother had abandoned her at the age of seven, so she knows what it is to lack maternal love. We see how she is abondoned by the father of her child, and is left in an unknown city with no money and no place to go. But despite all the misfortunes, she became happy and managed to become a devoted and loving mother.
The novel shows many life situations that can be used or understood as didactic. It is about great, good, true friends, strangers who have become family, who did not hesitate to lend a helping hand to a stranger. The story teaches that nothing should be judged by its cover, that generous and kind heart may beat in unseemly people. Hearts, who know how to love, and do not spare themselves. It is about that one should not give up, even if you're a pregnant 17-year-old girl, happened to show up without a penny in her pocket in an unfamiliar city.
Letts's book became best-selling, and in 2000 a film of the same name appeared, directed by Matt Williams and starring Natalie Portman, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, and Joan Cusack. The film was not as great a success as the book, and received mostly negative reviews.
