Novalee Nation is a pregnant 17-year-old from Tennessee heading to California with her boyfriend Willie Jack, but is abandoned by him at a Wal-Mart store in Sequoyah, Oklahoma. Novalee has no job, no skills and only $5.55 in her pocket, so she secretly lives in the Wal-Mart until her daughter Americus is born six weeks later. Novalee decides to raise her daughter and rebuild her life in Sequoyah, with the help of eccentric but kind strangers. Based on the best-selling novel by Billie Letts. A pregnant teen (Natalie Portman) goes on the road with her dreamer boy friend (Dylan Bruno), who abandons her in a Wal-Mart store in Oklahoma. Left alone with virtually no money, she hides out in the store for 6 weeks until her baby is born. After the birth, she gets national recognition as giving birth to the "Wal-mart baby". She makes friends with two local women (Stockard Channing as a religious, but promiscious woman & Ashley Judd as a woman with a pile of kids, who also seems to have considerable man problems until she marries the local exterminator). She also becomes friends with the Wal-mart photographer (David Keith), who leads her to a career, and with a young man (James Frain) who runs the library and takes her of his alcoholic sister, who is the real librarian. Novalee Nation, 17 and very pregnant, has never been part of a real home. The closest thing to family for the hard-luck teen is her selfish, would-be musician boyfriend, Willy Jack, with whom she's traveling from Tennessee to California in a rust bucket that used to be a Plymouth. A bathroom stop en route, at an Oklahoma Wal-Mart, changes Novalee's life forever. For when she leaves the store, she discovers that Willy Jack and the Plymouth are gone. Only her Polaroid camera remains in the parking space. Alone and broke, Novalee surreptitiously moves into the vast store, borrowing food and supplies from its shelves. When she gives birth on the floor - and her hideaway is revealed - Novalee and her "Wal-Mart Baby" become instant celebrities. More importantly, over the next few years, Novalee finally becomes part of an unconventional, makeshift family comprised of her wonderfully eccentric new friends. Now, with the family she always wanted, Novalee is transformed from a homeless teen to a successful and strong woman. She has finally found a home in this small town where fate has dropped her.