BILLIE LETTS

Novalee Nation heads this first novel. A feisty young woman who is seven months pregnant when she leaves her Tennessee trailer park with her boyfriend, she is abandoned outside a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma. Living on canned goods and sleeping behind the water heater, Novalee carries her pregnancy to term, and her child becomes known as the Wal-Mart baby. Novalee eventually gets a job at the Wal-Mart, and makes a life for herself and her child.