Intriguing: Shaina Twain

Nashville is noted for hard-luck stories that turn into sequined successes, seemingly overnight. But Shania Twain, a Canadian and part-Ojibway Indian who raised her three younger siblings after their parents died, holds bragging rights to the toughest tale. A gifted songwriter who learned her craft in Canada's Living the life of a country song honky-tonks, Twain, 30, broke onto country playlists in January with "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" No sooner had that song reached No. 1 than Twain scored again with "Any Man of Mine" and the title tune to her now 3-million-selling album, The Woman in Me, making many wonder how such full-blown talent had been nurtured without being noticed first on Nashville's Music Row.

The answer could be turned into a classic down-and-out ballad. Born in poverty to an Irish mother and Ojibway father, Shania--the name means "On My Way" in Ojibwan--learned to hunt, trap and pick guitar while growing up.She sang in bars as a teen to earn money for her family in Timmins, an Ontario mining town. After her parents were killed in a 1987 car accident, Shania, then 22, cared for her brothers and sister.She headed to Nashville only after they were grown.

Twain added another colorful twist to her r�sum� two years ago when she met British album producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange. His platinum touch has helped albums for AC/DC, Def Leppard and Michael Bolton, among others, sell more than 100 million copies. Twain's debut album caught Lange's ear, and the two began a transoceanic collaboration that led to marriage in 1993--and to The Woman in Me. For Twain, who capped her year with a performance for the First Couple at Ford's Theatre in Washington on Nov. 12, success means having little time to share with her husband at their lavish new 3,000-acre estate in the Adirondacks. "I've been so busy," she says with a weary smile, "we usually pass each other at airports."

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