Lori McKenna is also an acclaimed singer-songwriter who has just been thrust into the limelight thanks to superstar Faith Hill's decision to record three of McKenna's songs for her chart-topping Fireflies album. Hill (herself a wife and mother of three) heard in McKenna's work what a steadily growing audience has been hearing since her 1998 debut, Paper Wings & Halo: an intimate understanding and honest expression of the realities of domestic life.

Now many more will get the opportunity to make that connection, as Warner Bros. releases McKenna's searing, soaring Bittertown. Featuring the original renditions of two songs Hill covered on Fireflies ("If You Ask" and "Stealing Kisses"), along with another featured on country star Sara Evans' upcoming album ("Bible Song"), Bittertown paints a detailed picture of the oft-hidden complexities of day-to-day life in a small town: the lingering doubts and little victories, the longing that calls you away and the love that makes you stay.

McKenna is quick to point out that Bittertown's almost tangibly intimate textures don't mean it is necessarily a journal of her own home life. Rather, they're the collision point of autobiography, keen observation and a vivid imagination. "That's how my brain works," she says. "I can take a little piece of something that I heard somewhere and turn it into a song written in the first person."

But if Bittertown isn't fact, it is certainly truth, shot through as it is with an understanding that has already led audiences to identify passionately with these songs. McKenna's unique talent for getting such honest emotion on paper may be the result of her similarly unique career path.

"I started writing songs when I was about 13, but I never imagined I would actually leave my house with them," she recalls. "They were always written for me." McKenna learned to compose without self-consciousness, to leave in all the painful, passionate details that most writers would edit out before facing an audience. Why not? No one would hear the songs anyway.

And that's how things remained - until McKenna reached age 27, at which point she had already married and had three children. "I think my kids put everything in line for me," she says. "They, and my husband, gave me the courage to play in front of people. If the audience told me I stunk and they hated my songs, it wasn't gonna make or break me, because I had so much here at home. If it didn't work, I could at least share that lesson with my kids: 'I can't be regretful, because at least I tried to pursue this.' I guess I never really thought, 'What if it totally works?'"

It totally worked. McKenna began singing at open-mic nights in Boston, and the enthusiastic response led to her own shows. Surprisingly, McKenna found it perfectly natural to balance her full home life with a burgeoning musical career. She took care of the kids all day, played shows in the evening and wrote songs at the kitchen table after the children's bedtime. She drove from show to show in the same minivan in which she ferried around the McKenna kids: Brian, 16; Mark, 13; Christopher, 11; Megan, 4; and David, 1.

"As hard as it is to be a mom and work, I have the greatest job," she says. "My sister has a job where she works 40 hours a week in an office and she doesn't get to travel. I get to go off for two days at a time - just long enough to completely miss my kids. When I get home, I'm appreciative of them."

Meanwhile, McKenna's musical career was steadily taking flight. "It's been these gradual steps," she says. "The open-mic nights turned to shows, the shows turned to making a record, and then the record did really well, so we thought we'd make another one." Paper Wings & Halo was followed by 2001's Pieces of Me, 2003's The Kitchen Tapes - and, finally, Bittertown. McKenna and co-producer/drummer Lorne Entress narrowed down a batch of 40 songs to the 13 tracks that make up her most assured and vibrant album to date. "We just had a blast," she says. "I don't think there were any problems. We just had the easiest time." She even integrated her dual careers as mom and musician, as son Brian contributed guitar to "Mr. Sunshine." Youngest child David also made an appearance, in a way - McKenna discovered she was pregnant with him while recording overdubs.

Once finished, McKenna's only real ambition for the album was to satisfy the audience members who had been requesting copies of the new songs she'd been playing live for some time. Certainly, she didn't envision the string of events that began just over a year ago and led to her current status as an in-demand songwriter among country's top ranks. McKenna's friend, rising alt-country singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier, passed her songs along to the legendary songwriter Harlan Howard's publishing company, who played them for Faith Hill. The superstar had just finished recording her new album - but was so taken that she promptly went back into the studio to add three McKenna tunes. (She even wound up naming the CD after one of them, Pieces of Me's "Fireflies.")

McKenna pronounces herself overjoyed with Hill's renditions. "For some reason or another, she connected with the songs," says McKenna. "And the way she sang them kills me. It's just gorgeous."

Nonetheless, now it's time for the original voice of those songs to be heard as well. "My priority is, I want to write great songs, timeless songs, songs that affect people," declares McKenna. "But if I have the blessing to be able to share the way I interpret my songs with people, then I want to do that, too."