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her own life. “I am not always up on the
current terms,” she says, “but I hope my
respect for them shines through.”
Sometimes, young
aspiring writers will tell
Little Badger that they
are in too much pain
to write. The advice
she gives them is not
to force it, especially in
the wake of every thing
they’ve had to deal with
over the past few years.
But for Little Bad-
ger herself, the process of writing A
Snake Falls to Earth helped her under-
stand how writing can be a way to cope
imaginative and fantastical elements,
provided her with moments to escape
the sadness that consumed her life.
Although her father didn’t read
much of her favorite genre while she
was growing up, he always encouraged
her to explore the stories she wanted
to tell. “I wanted to finish it in time for
him to read it, but it didn’t work out
that way,” she says. She finished a first
draft of the book a few months after her
father died. But he was able to see one
of the first copies of Elatsoe in those
final months—it was one of the last
times she remembers him smiling.
Despite writing A Snake Falls to
Earth in a period of deep personal pain,
and amid a global pandemic, Little Bad-
ger unfolds a narrative that manages to
be hopeful, fun and adventurous. It also
takes cues from the Lipan Apache ori-
gin story.
Protagonist Nina, living in that grim
near future version of Texas, is desper-
ate to translate a story in a language
she doesn’t quite understand—one
passed down from her great-great-
grandmother about animal people that
live on earth. The story will be lost to
time if she can’t figure out how to read
it. And she’s certain that the little she
understands of it is true—that animal
people exist. Her theories are confirmed
when she crosses paths with a snake
person named Oli. Oli is from the Re-
flecting World, a magical land of spirits
and monsters, and he has come to earth
on a mission. His best friend is gravely
ill, and he needs Nina’s help to save him.
Nina is relentlessly optimistic, de-
spite it all. She never stops search-
ing for answers about her great-great-
grandmother’s story—there’s an
underlying message of hope in her de-
termination, her belief that she can pre-
serve something sacred.
Little Badger remains optimistic too.
“There’s this sense of almost fatalism,
that the world is going to end,” she says.
“The way I think about it is: maybe. But
my responsibility is to fight for the best
version of the future that I can.” □
with trauma. Around the same time she
sold Elatsoe, in late 2018, Little Bad-
ger learned that her father had been
diagnosed with termi-
nal mesothelioma. By
March 2020, his con-
dition had worsened.
Little Badger quit her
day job and moved
temporarily to Con-
necticut to help care
for him, alongside her
mother and her brother.
She started writing
A Snake Falls to Earth while her father
was in and out of the ICU. Working
on the book, which is full of so many
‘‘I am not always
up on the current
terms, but I hope
my respect for them
shines through.’’
DARCIE LITTLE BADGER,
on writing for teens
◁
Little Badger also writes speculative
fiction and contributed to the Marvel’s
Voices: Indigenous Voices comic book
JEREMY DENNIS FOR TIME
