Turtle Moon transports the reader to Verity, Florida, a place where anything can happen during the month of May, when migrating sea turtles come to town, mistaking the glow of the streetlights for the moon. A young single mother is murdered in her apartment and her baby is gone. Keith, a 12-year-old boy in the same apartment building, also disappears. In pursuit of the baby, the boy, and the killer, are Keith's divorced mother and a cop who was once considered the meanest boy in town.