Mariela and José were once the golden couple of the Mexican artists' inner circle. Together they built a family and an artist colony to host friends Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Rufino Tamayo. But now their daughter has grown up and run away, their friends are too famous to call, and artistic inspiration has been strangled by isolation and lies. Set in the northern Mexican desert in 1950, Mariela in the Desert is a deadly mystery-a layered yet profoundly honest story of what happens to a family when creativity is forced to dry and wither away.