Books like where the heart is

Where the Heart Is is a 1995 novel by Billie Letts. It was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection in December 1998. A 2000 film of the same name was directed by Matt Williams, starring Natalie Portman, Ashley Judd and Stockard Channing.

Where the Heart Is follows the lives of Novalee Nation, Willy Jack Picken, and their daughter Americus Nation for a period of seven years in the 1980s and early 1990s. Above all, the book dramatizes in detail the tribulations of lower-income and foster children in the United States.

This novel opens with Novalee and Willy Jack, her then boyfriend, traveling from Tennessee to California. Letts describes Novalee's relationships with the number 7; at the age of 7 her mother ran off with a baseball umpire named Fred, her best friend in seventh grade got arrested and a crazy customer at her cafe job cut her from wrist to elbow and took seventy-seven stitches to close her up."