Tess Camillo moves to a charming Oregon theater town to help her recently widowed BFF. She looks forward to coffeehouses, world-class theater, wineries, and nature walks. But when a university student is gutted in his dorm room, the peaceful town reels from the impact of evil. Toss into the mix radical feminists, an ancient manuscript, death tableaus, a decoy murder, a vitriolic election, and her cancer diagnosis, and Bad Moon Rising rushes along an ominous yet zany trajectory, slowing only for moon gazing and the cannabis harvest.