A Snake Falls to Earth follows the lives of Nina, a 16-year-old
Lipan Apache girl, and Oli, a 15-year-old
cottonmouth kid from the land of spirits and monsters, known as the Reflecting World. Because the human world and the Reflecting World have not interacted in centuries, the characters do not initially know about one another. Nina is deeply entrenched in traditional stories and begins to learn more about the Reflecting World. Her grandmother inherited some healing powers from her Reflecting World ancestors, and her father, a bookstore owner, provides books to individuals from the Reflecting World who visit Earth in human form. Nina has also taken on the task of dictating and translating a Spanish and Lipan Apache oral story from her great-great-grandmother, who passes away, as well as trying to figure out why her grandmother becomes ill whenever she leaves the home. In the Reflecting World, Oli is forced from his home and finds a space to live near the bottomless lake. There, he befriends two coyote sisters, Risk and Reign, as well as a frog named Ami. When Ami falls ill because his Earth-equivalent species is nearing extinction, Oli knows he must travel to Earth to find a cure. When Nina and Oli eventually meet, they unite to "deal with a trickster mockingbird; an untrustworthy internet influencer; severe weather; and the threat of violent, cultish followers of a power-hungry 'King' ... who aims to be the only immortal left on Earth. They also use magic and learn why Nina's grandmother's health mysteriously declines whenever she leaves the family's land." The novel shifts perspective between Nina and Oli in alternating chapters. Throughout the novel, the reader receives "smaller, nesting narratives, off shoots from the main storyline, as frequently seen in oral story telling traditions when peripheral characters are given a little backstory too, as they pop in and out of the main plot lines." Key themes include "perceptions and understandings of space, time, identity, environmentalism, communication, and “the rightness of home.” == Critical reception ==