The film follows Novalee Nation, a pregnant 17-year-old girl from Tennessee, who sets out for California with her boyfriend.

Seventeen and 7 months pregnant, Novalee Nation ( Natalie Portman ) sets off on a road trip from Tennessee to California with her ignorant ne ' er-do-well boyfriend, Willy Jack Pickens ( Dylan Bruno ).

When Novalee reaches out for her change at the register, the amount of $ 5. 55 sends her into a panic and she runs outside to find that her boyfriend has left ( Novalee believes that the number 5 is a sign of trouble or a negative event of significance is to come because when she was 5, her mother left her for a baseball umpire and when she was a waitress at a restaurant, a regular customer went crazy and cut her on her arm from wrist to elbow and it took 55 stitches to close the wound ).

While in the hospital, Novalee gets a visit from her mother ( Sally Field ), whom she has not seen since she was a child.

Novalee remembers that, in the hospital, she was reading cards that people sent to her and that one card post marked and sent from Midnight Mississippi said her baby was an abomination under God.

After the funeral, one of Sister Husband's friends from AA informs Novalee that she is the beneficiary of Sister's estate, worth around $ 41, 000.

One day, Novalee receives a call from Brownie, Lexie's oldest child.

Lexie tells Novalee that her new boyfriend had gone to her house and tried to molest her two oldest children, Brownie and Praline, before Praline had thrown up on him and Lexie returned home from work early and caught him before he got to Brownie.

She meets Sister Husband ( Stockard Channing ), a woman who runs the Welcome Wagon in town, and mistakenly believes Novalee to be her long-lost relative Ruth Ann.

Novalee goes to Sister Husband's house and explains that she is not Ruth Ann.

However, Sister Husband invites her in to stay for some cornbread and buttermilk, and Novalee plants the buckeye tree in Sister's yard.

Shortly after, Sister Husband comes to pick up Novalee and offers to let Novalee and the baby live at her house ( as well as because Sister Husband does not know how to take care of the buckeye tree Novalee planted ).

Later, Novalee is shown to have a good time at Sister Husband's house.

One day, when a tornado blows through the town, Novalee and Americus hide in an underground shelter, but Sister is out running an errand and does not make it back in time.

In Sequoyah, Oklahoma, Novalee asks her boyfriend to stop at Wal-Mart so that she can go to the bathroom and replace her shoes, which had fallen out a hole in the floor of their beat-up car.

Novalee also meets a photographer named Moses Whitecotton ( Keith David ) who becomes her mentor in later years.

That night in the Wal-Mart, Novalee wakes up during a thunderstorm when she starts feeling pain in her stomach.

After being asked by her nurse Lexie Coop ( Ashley Judd ) what she will name her baby girl, Novalee decides to name her baby Americus ( because Moses suggested Novalee to give her baby a strong name ).

Novalee visits the library and meets Forney Hull ( James Frain ), who works at the library while caring for his sister ( the librarian ), whose health has been ruined by alcoholism.

Later, Novalee and Forney are getting Christmas trees, when Forney remembers Americus is 5 months old.

Novalee asks Forney why bad things happened to her.

When Forney ’ s sister passes away due to alcoholism and he does not appear to be at the funeral, Novalee finds him in a hotel and comforts him.

Novalee and Forney end up sleeping together, after which he tells her that he loves her and she doesn't reply.

When Forney comes back, he talks about visiting Bowdoin and Novalee realizes that he could now finish his education.

Forney says he loves her and wants to get a factory job and stay with her, but Novalee lies, saying she does not love him, and he leaves.

Novalee realizes that she made a similar mistake lying to Forney.

* Forney does return to college until Novalee comes back to confess her lie in the movie but in the book Forney does not return to college ; instead he travels around the nation.

* Forney and Novalee did get married in a Wal-Mart but in the book they do not get married at all.

Later that evening, Novalee feels sick and runs into the bathroom to vomit, and when she comes out again she discovers that the store is closed, locked, and dark.

This shocks Novalee about her unlucky number and races home to find out that Americus was kidnapped.

The next day, it is 12: 15 in the lobby, but her mother never shows up, and Novalee realizes that her mother only wanted the money.

Novalee gets to know Lexie, who reveals that she has had four children by three different men ( and that Lexie named her children after snack names ; Brownie, Praline, Cherry, and Baby Ruth ).

On Americus's 5th birthday, Novalee is paranoid about her party because of the unlucky 5 ( when Americus was 5 days old, she had jaundice ; at 5 weeks old, she had an ear infection ; at 5 months old, she was kidnapped ).

Since Novalee has only a few dollars, she secretly moves into the Wal-Mart store.

For the rest of the afternoon, Novalee browses Wal-Mart.

The next morning, Novalee wakes up in the hospital and became an instant celebrity after giving birth in a Wal-Mart.

Novalee says no, and her mother says that the two women can get an apartment together.

Novalee shows her the $ 500 that she was given by the President of the Wal-Mart chain to her mother.

Novalee agrees that her mother can come pick her and Americus up at 9: 00 a. m. the next day.

in working with these patients the therapist eventually gets to do some at least private mulling over of the possible meaning of a belch, or the passage of flatus, not only because he is reduced to this for lack of anything else to analyze, but also because he learns that even these animal-like sounds constitute forms of communication in which, from time to time, quite different things are being said, long before the patient can become sufficiently aware of these, as distinct feelings and concepts, to say them in words.

The young child learns from parents and teachers that temper tantrums, screaming, kicking, and hitting will not get him what he wants ; ;

Pip first learns `` the stupendous power of money '' from the sycophantic tailor, Mr. Trabb, whose brutality to his boy helper exactly matches the financial resource of each new customer, and whose fawning hands touch `` the outside of each elbow '' and `` rub '' Pip out of the shop.

But as the war changed his attitude and personality, poems and other aspects of his past life become something Paul could not remember having any link to, and he learns to disconnect himself from his feelings.

That night, Ahasuerus suffers from insomnia, and when the court records are read to him to help him sleep, he learns of the services rendered by Mordechai in the previous plot against his life.

* Chymistry ( 1663 ) – a scientific art, by which one learns to dissolve bodies, and draw from them the different substances on their composition, and how to unite them again, and exalt them to a higher perfection ( Glaser ).

Lee learns from his Sifu ( teacher ) that Han was also once a Shaolin student, but had been expelled from their order for abusing their code of conduct.

Before leaving, Lee learns from his teacher that Han's bodyguard O ' Hara ( Robert Wall ) had been involved in the death of his sister, Su Lin ( Angela Mao ), years ago, when she committed suicide to save herself from dishonour after being cornered by O ' Hara and a collection of Han's thugs.

* In the manga and anime Hikaru no Go, the protagonist Hikaru Shindo learns Go from the ghost of a Go genius from the Heian period, Fujiwara no Sai.

During this time, Marlow learns that at this station Mr. Kurtz is far from being admired, but instead, more or less, Kurtz is resented ( mostly by the manager ).

In the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, Luke receives extensive Jedi training from the elderly ( and only surviving ) Jedi Master Yoda ( Frank Oz ), even as he learns that Vader is in fact his father, former Jedi Anakin Skywalker.

In Have His Carcase, he finds Harriet is not in London, but learns from a reporter that she has discovered a corpse while on a walking holiday on England's coast.

On the Ringworld, there is an analogous ( and apparently more potent ) compound developed from Tree-of-Life, but they are mutually incompatible ; in The Ringworld Engineers, Louis Wu learns that the character Halrloprillalar died when in ARM custody after leaving the Ringworld, as a result of having taken boosterspice after having used the Ringworld equivalent.

He is certain that the witches ’ prophecies guarantee his invincibility, but is struck numb with fear when he learns that the English army is advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood.

However, once a student learns that most Baroque instrumental music was associated with dances, such as the gavotte and the sarabande, and keyboard music from the Baroque era was played on the harpsichord or the pipe organ, a modern-day student is better able to understand how the piece should be played.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of ANNs is their ability to be used as an arbitrary function approximation mechanism that ' learns ' from observed data.

Gylfi learns from Odin ( as Jafnhárr ) that Niflheimr was the first world to be created after Muspelheim:

Case's nervous system is repaired using new technology that Armitage offers the clinic as payment, but he soon learns from Armitage that sacs of the poison that first crippled him have been placed in his blood vessels as well.

He learns that his idyllic town is a constructed reality designed to protect him from the frightening fact that he lives on a then-future Earth ( circa 1998 ) that is at war with its colonists on the Moon who are fighting for a permanent Lunar habitation that is politically independent of Earth as well.

< span style =" font-size: 90 %;"> ( Red Faction )</ span ></ ref > Parker learns from Gryphon about Dr. Capek, who created " The Plague ".

Enterprise Captain Jean Luc Picard learns more about Soran from Enterprise bartender Guinan ; Soran and Guinan were among those rescued by the Enterprise-B.

Discovering that Sha ' uri has some experience with drawn symbols, Jackson indicates to her that he wants to see more signs, and with her help leaves the city and learns from hieroglyphs in the people's hidden catacombs how the Egyptian god Ra was actually an alien lifeform who had abandoned his dying world to seek a cure for his own mortality, and had finally come to earth, where he " possessed " the body of one human youth like a parasite, and enslaved humans with his advanced technology.