Creech wrote Walk Two Moons in the first person, revealing the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist, Salamanca Tree Hiddle (Sal), a young girl searching for her mother. The novel is a story-within-a-story. Creech writes about Sal's road trip to Idaho with her eccentric grandparents, and during the trip, Sal tells her grandparents about her friend Phoebe Winterbottom and the disappearance of Phoebe's mother. In the telling of her story, the tragic events of her own mother's disappearance and parallels between the situations and reactions of the girls are revealed.
Sal lived on a farm in Bybanks, Kentucky, with her mother and father. Her parents seemed to love each other very much and Sal, "a country girl at heart," was at home on the farm. Sal's mother has a stillborn baby and, afterward, becomes quite depressed. She can't seem to work through her grief. Her solution is to go away "to clear her head, and to clear her heart of all the bad things." Sal and her father try to persuade her not to go, but she leaves anyway. Sal and her father are lost without her mother, but eventually they settle into a routine of their own. Sal is angry at her mother for leaving. Her mother sends her postcards from every stop the bus makes en route to Idaho. One day, Sal's father learns that her mother won't be coming home. Sal's mother is killed in a bus accident. Her father goes to Idaho to bury Sal's mother.
Not long after Sal's father returns from Idaho, he decides to sell the farm. He can't stay there because memories of Sal's mother are everywhere. Sal can't bear the thought of selling the farm. She cannot let go of the memories of her mother and, because she has no closure on her mother's death, such as a funeral, she continues to hope that one day her mother will come home. Sal is angry and she is in denial about her mother's death. Her father rents the farm instead of selling it, and the two of them move to Euclid, Ohio where Margaret Cadaver, a new friend of her father's, lives. They rent a small house a few blocks from Margaret's. Sal's father met Margaret when he went to Idaho. Margaret, the only survivor of the crash, had been sitting next to Sal's mother on the bus.
