Moira is a disturbing and neo-Gothic fable, in which the autobiographical hero in heterosexual disguise plays out his mystico-erotic compulsions. Set in the American South, the novel charts the fate of a university student, Joseph, who murders a girl whom he has raped. In Greek, of course, moira is a word meaning fate, and Green's pointed naming of Joseph's victim reveals his customary preoccupation with destiny as it pursues those whose sexuality disturbs them violently, even fatally.
