On the windswept plains of Far West Texas, the town of Rosadero sits at the crossroads of many worlds. Renowned as a capital of postmodern art, the ruins of the Zaldos Pueblo haunt the edge of town with the mystery of a vanished people. In the evenings, unexplained balls of light streak across the prairie, inspiring the imaginations of residents and visitors alike. Home to rancher dynasties and descendants of the Mexican Revolution, the modern realities of the border sweep up all who find themselves in Rosadero. Outlaw drifters with romantic dreams, border agents at war with their consciences, refugees seeking sanctuary, and the family risking everything to provide it - this is where their stories meet.

Into this unlikeliest of settings, Anna Tatevyan travels in search of her missing brother, Jakob. A graduate student obsessed with the relationship between a sitting US congressman and an international crime syndicate, Jakob has vanished into the high desert without a trace. On her journey for the truth, Anna tries to help another woman also searching for a missing brother: Mariazul Bautista, a woman whose encounter with Anna leads to her arrest by the Border Patrol, an arrest that turns out to be a kidnapping.

An anti-Western about the American origins of global violence, Light in Rosadero is a reckoning with the dark legacy of the frontier.