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Trespass Collection #3
The Backbone of the World
An American Indian woman’s past and future collide in unthinkable ways in this richly imagined short story of deep secrets and Lovecraftian horrors by a New York Times bestselling author.
Millie Two Bears lives alone in a trailer in the heart of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Since her husband went to jail, she’s been on the outs with the reservation. And it’s not just people she has to contend with. Now the prairie dogs are moving in on her patch of land. When a strange woman comes into Millie’s life, and Millie’s rodent war escalates, a fateful confrontation with vengeance, secrets, and survival is just underfoot.
Stephen Graham Jones’s The Backbone of the World is part of Trespass, a collection of wild stories about animal instincts, human folly, and survival from award-winning, bestselling authors. Read or listen to each in a single sitting.
Millie Two Bears lives alone in a trailer in the heart of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Since her husband went to jail, she’s been on the outs with the reservation. And it’s not just people she has to contend with. Now the prairie dogs are moving in on her patch of land. When a strange woman comes into Millie’s life, and Millie’s rodent war escalates, a fateful confrontation with vengeance, secrets, and survival is just underfoot.
Stephen Graham Jones’s The Backbone of the World is part of Trespass, a collection of wild stories about animal instincts, human folly, and survival from award-winning, bestselling authors. Read or listen to each in a single sitting.
2 pages, Audible Audio
First published February 24, 2022
276 people are currently reading
4678 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Graham Jones
236 books14.8k followersStephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author thirty-five or so books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 501 reviews
March 17, 2022
Excuse me what the fuck
March 31, 2022
"They're smart little dudes, yeah," Frog said, then corrected with "prairie dogs, I mean" as if that had been in question.
"Coyotes eat them too," Millie added.
"Chicken nuggets of the prairie," Frog said.
Prairie dogs . . .
Crunchy chicken nuggets, or demons straight from Hades?
I'm really not sure any more, but I'm gonna stay the hell away from them . . . just to be on the safe side.
"Coyotes eat them too," Millie added.
"Chicken nuggets of the prairie," Frog said.
Prairie dogs . . .
Crunchy chicken nuggets, or demons straight from Hades?
I'm really not sure any more, but I'm gonna stay the hell away from them . . . just to be on the safe side.
September 13, 2022
A short story that packs a punch. Fluid, darkly funny, and filled with emotion, the Back Bone of the World examines the conflicts of love, forgiveness, tradition, and defending ones home.
March 12, 2025
I'm slowly going through the short stories in this collection after I finish the audiobooks I rented from Libby. This one was next on my list.
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This short story by Stephen Graham Jones follows Millie Two Bears as she embarks on a fight against prairie dogs on her deceased husband's property that turns into more of a fight for her life than she was expecting. The strangeness of her new tenant's behavior certainly isn't helping matters either.
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I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I loved the fact that Millie is Native American and the narrator is also Native American. At least, her accent sounded like she's Native American. I certainly hope she is.
I was not expecting the end of this story AT ALL. Holy shit, what a great ending! I don't want to give it away, as I want y'all to read this story, but it was totally worth the confusion I felt. I think the confusion I felt for most of the book is the only reason this story wasn't rated 5 stars.
I wasn't expecting the twist toward the end of the story, nor was I expecting the truth of what happened to the tenant. I mean, the tenant's name was odd enough, in my opinion, but that's just me. I'm probably the odd one out here, right? lmao
Yes, as I've already said, I will shout my recommendation of this short story to the sky above. I don't even mind admitting my nerdiness in this area. I'm a bit feral with the books I enjoy and this story is going to be added to that list.
If you want a good sci-fi book with a shocking twist at the end - who doesn't love a good twist and turn on occasion? - then this is the book for you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did if you do decide to give it a try!
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This short story by Stephen Graham Jones follows Millie Two Bears as she embarks on a fight against prairie dogs on her deceased husband's property that turns into more of a fight for her life than she was expecting. The strangeness of her new tenant's behavior certainly isn't helping matters either.
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I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I loved the fact that Millie is Native American and the narrator is also Native American. At least, her accent sounded like she's Native American. I certainly hope she is.
I was not expecting the end of this story AT ALL. Holy shit, what a great ending! I don't want to give it away, as I want y'all to read this story, but it was totally worth the confusion I felt. I think the confusion I felt for most of the book is the only reason this story wasn't rated 5 stars.
I wasn't expecting the twist toward the end of the story, nor was I expecting the truth of what happened to the tenant. I mean, the tenant's name was odd enough, in my opinion, but that's just me. I'm probably the odd one out here, right? lmao
Yes, as I've already said, I will shout my recommendation of this short story to the sky above. I don't even mind admitting my nerdiness in this area. I'm a bit feral with the books I enjoy and this story is going to be added to that list.
If you want a good sci-fi book with a shocking twist at the end - who doesn't love a good twist and turn on occasion? - then this is the book for you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did if you do decide to give it a try!
January 9, 2023
"Eleven months after her husband Arthur swerved around a stopped school bus and mowed down two first graders and got sentenced to twenty years, Millie Two Bears went to war against the prairie dogs."
Millie Two Bears has a problem on her hands. The land is full of prairie dog holes that she has stepped in herself and one of her horses is lame from stepping in one too. Something must be done, which makes Millie feel like a "bad Indian". Isn't it bad to get the prairie dogs out of their natural habitat? Possibly even un-alive them?
But there's something else going on with these prairie dogs...
This was such an entertaining read. I had no idea where it was going and once I did...Oh my god, very disturbing. I loved this.
Millie Two Bears has a problem on her hands. The land is full of prairie dog holes that she has stepped in herself and one of her horses is lame from stepping in one too. Something must be done, which makes Millie feel like a "bad Indian". Isn't it bad to get the prairie dogs out of their natural habitat? Possibly even un-alive them?
But there's something else going on with these prairie dogs...
This was such an entertaining read. I had no idea where it was going and once I did...Oh my god, very disturbing. I loved this.
May 14, 2025
“And somewhere in there? Somewhere in that stretch of time, it would get big enough to get worshipped, probably. By people with hockey-puck technology. By people who could shunt tourists or scientists back in time, to document their genesis. Or, just to stand close to it, in wonder.”
Excellent short story, I always knew that Prairie Dogs were something else🤣🤣
Excellent short story, I always knew that Prairie Dogs were something else🤣🤣
May 21, 2022
Reads like a goosebumps book
January 27, 2024
Very weird but oddly good!
October 21, 2022
Such a perfect balance of creepy and sentimental, with a wonderful blending of supernatural horror, sci-fi and magical realism.
December 24, 2023
Let the reader invest emotionally in a fully rounded character like Millie, and you can let the world end and begin again in any number of ways, as SGJ does in this affecting tale of Otherness and history.
April 1, 2022
4.5 stars rounded up
A strong story in this collection, Stephen Graham Jones writes about a Blackfeet woman battling an invasion of prairie dogs, but with a speculative horror twist. I don't want to spoil anything, but this way great and the the ending was subtle but disturbing.
A strong story in this collection, Stephen Graham Jones writes about a Blackfeet woman battling an invasion of prairie dogs, but with a speculative horror twist. I don't want to spoil anything, but this way great and the the ending was subtle but disturbing.
January 5, 2023
A strange take of Prairie dogs, tentacles and a road traffic accident.
'The next morning, a prairie dog poked its head up from a hole, stared into her soul, and she had the distinct sensation of eyes painted on a fingertip—which was stupid. This wasn’t kindergarten, this was real life. '
Part 3 of the Trespass Series.
This was a very strange but enjoyable short story with some Lovecraftian influences thrown in.
I would have given a higher rating if it was my for some of the conversation being a little erratic or hard to follow.
Overall a neat short story from SGJ.
'The next morning, a prairie dog poked its head up from a hole, stared into her soul, and she had the distinct sensation of eyes painted on a fingertip—which was stupid. This wasn’t kindergarten, this was real life. '
Part 3 of the Trespass Series.
This was a very strange but enjoyable short story with some Lovecraftian influences thrown in.
I would have given a higher rating if it was my for some of the conversation being a little erratic or hard to follow.
Overall a neat short story from SGJ.
April 2, 2022
Cthulhu Mythos meets The Monkey's Paw
Review of the Audible Original audiobook (February 24, 2022), released simultaneously with the Amazon Original Kindle eBook.
My lede is probably a bit of a spoiler, but the synopsis already describes this as containing "Lovecraftian horrors", so I don't think I'm going that much further by saying that it is an expansion of H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos and the "Old Ones". The other reference may be more obscure, but probably anyone familiar with the horror genre will know it.
Millie Two Bears is fighting off what seems like an infestation of prairie dogs on her husband Arthur's land on the Blackfeet Reservation. Arthur has been sent to prison for manslaughter in a road accident. Millie is joined in the fight by another woman nicknamed Frog who rents out a small camper on the land allotment. The battle escalates from poison pellets to rifle shooting until the full horror of the origin of the prairie dogs is revealed.
This was an effective short story which tied in two classics of the horror world. Although it uses a First Nations setting it doesn't particularly count as an indigenous people's story as the mythology is drawn from a completely different genre.
The Backbone of the World is one of six Amazon Original Kindle eBooks/Audible Audio audiobooks released February 24, 2022 as part of the Trespass Collection of short stories which "Take a walk on the wild side. When nature gets up close and personal, it isn’t always pretty. A fallen tree sparks a poisonous feud between neighbors. A child searches the darkness for the gleam of a tiger’s teeth. A woman holds off a colony of oddly relentless prairie dogs. In unsettling stories that range from horror to magical realism, award-winning authors lay bare the secrets hidden in the land."
Trivia and Link
You can watch for current and past Amazon Original Kindle short stories which are usually paired with their Audible Original narrations at an Amazon page here.
Review of the Audible Original audiobook (February 24, 2022), released simultaneously with the Amazon Original Kindle eBook.
My lede is probably a bit of a spoiler, but the synopsis already describes this as containing "Lovecraftian horrors", so I don't think I'm going that much further by saying that it is an expansion of H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos and the "Old Ones". The other reference may be more obscure, but probably anyone familiar with the horror genre will know it.
Millie Two Bears is fighting off what seems like an infestation of prairie dogs on her husband Arthur's land on the Blackfeet Reservation. Arthur has been sent to prison for manslaughter in a road accident. Millie is joined in the fight by another woman nicknamed Frog who rents out a small camper on the land allotment. The battle escalates from poison pellets to rifle shooting until the full horror of the origin of the prairie dogs is revealed.
This was an effective short story which tied in two classics of the horror world. Although it uses a First Nations setting it doesn't particularly count as an indigenous people's story as the mythology is drawn from a completely different genre.
The Backbone of the World is one of six Amazon Original Kindle eBooks/Audible Audio audiobooks released February 24, 2022 as part of the Trespass Collection of short stories which "Take a walk on the wild side. When nature gets up close and personal, it isn’t always pretty. A fallen tree sparks a poisonous feud between neighbors. A child searches the darkness for the gleam of a tiger’s teeth. A woman holds off a colony of oddly relentless prairie dogs. In unsettling stories that range from horror to magical realism, award-winning authors lay bare the secrets hidden in the land."
Trivia and Link
You can watch for current and past Amazon Original Kindle short stories which are usually paired with their Audible Original narrations at an Amazon page here.
March 21, 2022
Oh, boy, this will not be my last Stephen Graham Jones. I mean, I was already planning to read My Heart is a Chainsaw pretty soon, but this weird as hell short story has cemented my need to do that.
Let the first sentence set the tone for you:
Millie Two Bears, prison widow, was such a good main character, and I loved the way that audio narrator Charlotte Flyte brought her to life. Alone on her husband's allotment, determined that she not let his family kick her out of her home, Millie is also determined to get rid of the prairie dogs ruining the land around her house. Then it gets weird. And then weirder. And SGJ just leads you there bit by bit, until at the end you're like, yeah, this couldn't have ended any other way. This is horror, but it's also a character piece, and the story absolutely jumped into life in my mind.
So far, this is the best story in this collection by quite a large margin. Can Karen Russell, Tochi Onyebuchi or Carmen Maria Machado top it?
Let the first sentence set the tone for you:
"Eleven months after her husband Arthur swerved around a stopped school bus and mowed down two first graders and got sentenced to twenty years, Millie Two Bears went to war against the prairie dogs."
Millie Two Bears, prison widow, was such a good main character, and I loved the way that audio narrator Charlotte Flyte brought her to life. Alone on her husband's allotment, determined that she not let his family kick her out of her home, Millie is also determined to get rid of the prairie dogs ruining the land around her house. Then it gets weird. And then weirder. And SGJ just leads you there bit by bit, until at the end you're like, yeah, this couldn't have ended any other way. This is horror, but it's also a character piece, and the story absolutely jumped into life in my mind.
So far, this is the best story in this collection by quite a large margin. Can Karen Russell, Tochi Onyebuchi or Carmen Maria Machado top it?
December 29, 2022
I wasn’t prepared for a short story with prairie dogs to affect me this way.
March 6, 2022
4.5 stars
October 21, 2022
"Eleven months after her husband Arthur swerved around a stopped school bus and mowed down two first graders and got sentenced to twenty years, Millie Two Bears went to war against the prairie dogs."
Simultaneously incredibly unsettling and achingly human, “Backbone” is a cosmic horror story tinged with grief, rage, and ultimately hope. In the heart of Blackfeet Nation in Montana, Millie Two Bears is waging war against a rapidly growing (and incredibly ominous) colony of prairie dogs. Dubbed the “chicken nuggets of the prairie,” they should be an easy problem to solve, right? Then why, despite trying nearly every method under the sun, won’t they die? To make matters worse, Millie grows suspicious of her new boarder, a mysterious woman who seemingly vanished without a trace. In a relentless battle of human versus nature (or ancient malevolent creature) the reader finds themselves at the same moral crossroads as the vivacious and stoney-hearted Millie.
This novella was quirky, weird, and strangely endearing. In its shirt length it not only weaves a gripping tale, but tackles themes of loss, grieving, healing, and environmentalism. In the touching afterward, we can sympathize with our pesky prairie nuggets, as defensive and retaliatory killing may eventually drive these species to extinction. I highly recommend this eccentric short-story and will be certain to check out the author’s other works!
Simultaneously incredibly unsettling and achingly human, “Backbone” is a cosmic horror story tinged with grief, rage, and ultimately hope. In the heart of Blackfeet Nation in Montana, Millie Two Bears is waging war against a rapidly growing (and incredibly ominous) colony of prairie dogs. Dubbed the “chicken nuggets of the prairie,” they should be an easy problem to solve, right? Then why, despite trying nearly every method under the sun, won’t they die? To make matters worse, Millie grows suspicious of her new boarder, a mysterious woman who seemingly vanished without a trace. In a relentless battle of human versus nature (or ancient malevolent creature) the reader finds themselves at the same moral crossroads as the vivacious and stoney-hearted Millie.
This novella was quirky, weird, and strangely endearing. In its shirt length it not only weaves a gripping tale, but tackles themes of loss, grieving, healing, and environmentalism. In the touching afterward, we can sympathize with our pesky prairie nuggets, as defensive and retaliatory killing may eventually drive these species to extinction. I highly recommend this eccentric short-story and will be certain to check out the author’s other works!
April 11, 2022
Wow is the word I said a couple of times during the last few pages of this story. It is probably one of my favorite Stephen Graham Jones stories. This is not a complicated story; it’s very straightforward, and tells a wonderful tale that mixes drama, mythology, science-fiction, and a little speculative fiction.
The reader doesn’t have a lot of time to think and ponder what’s happening. The main protagonist is very believable and I enjoyed joining her on this quest of discovery and, I suppose, good fortune and redemption. Another story of how wisened women can be very resourceful when an opportunity is presented. LOL!
The story is engaging and, as always, the author informs the reader of another facet of tribal customs and how Indigenous Americans try to always honor and have learned to communicate with the land. But he throws in a delicious little twist to cap off a solid narrative!
The reader doesn’t have a lot of time to think and ponder what’s happening. The main protagonist is very believable and I enjoyed joining her on this quest of discovery and, I suppose, good fortune and redemption. Another story of how wisened women can be very resourceful when an opportunity is presented. LOL!
The story is engaging and, as always, the author informs the reader of another facet of tribal customs and how Indigenous Americans try to always honor and have learned to communicate with the land. But he throws in a delicious little twist to cap off a solid narrative!
January 28, 2023
Despite the cute cover, nothing else stuck out.
November 18, 2023
Huh. Very weird. But also very intriguing.
April 23, 2025
Enjoyed this quite weird short story!
December 6, 2024
Prairie Dog Invasion
Millie was about to lose her home, because her husband accidentally hit two children with his car and went to prison. His family was repossessing the land from her. She had a few weeks, and in that time a young woman came to rent the little camper trailer. She seemed nice if a little confused.
Meanwhile, Millie needed to clear the prairie dogs off her husband’s land, because she wouldn’t have the family think he didn’t care for the property. That task turned out to be harder than she could imagine.
This is an interesting story with an end I didn’t see coming. Four stars having deducted a star for the draggy front half.
Millie was about to lose her home, because her husband accidentally hit two children with his car and went to prison. His family was repossessing the land from her. She had a few weeks, and in that time a young woman came to rent the little camper trailer. She seemed nice if a little confused.
Meanwhile, Millie needed to clear the prairie dogs off her husband’s land, because she wouldn’t have the family think he didn’t care for the property. That task turned out to be harder than she could imagine.
This is an interesting story with an end I didn’t see coming. Four stars having deducted a star for the draggy front half.
February 29, 2024
This got weird and I really enjoyed it. Would definitely read if it was made into a full length novel! But it still works really well as a short story.
April 15, 2022
I love this weird, speculative horror story! I never knew reading about prairie dogs could be so entertaining and wild but here we are. Leave it to Stephen Graham Jones to always get my mind working. Engaging and fast-paced, this is a story you can read in a sitting and have your day made!
June 19, 2022
The best story in the Trespass collection, I feel. The story is about a Blackfeet woman who has experienced a tragedy and has an prairie dog outbreak on her land. The ending is something, and the story is nicely creepy.
September 1, 2024
this is now the second book i’ve read this year in which the end of the world is at the hands/paws of a group of prairie dogs 😅
January 20, 2023
I had no idea where this story was going at first, nor did I know when I thought I had figured it out. You have to read to the end, or at least I did. It's very clever and quite satisfying.
Stephen King teaches that it's incumbent upon any great story to begin with a great first sentence, as this one most certainly does.
This is one part of six stories by different authors, called The Trespass Collection. It's an Amazon Kindle original series, so I think that's the only way you can access them. There's no particular order to read them in, but all have to do with nature, wildlife, the environment, etc. The other contributors are Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jeff Vanderneer, Tochi Onyebuchi, Carmen Maria Machado, and Karen Russell, all of whom are big time favorite authors of mine.
I'm looking forward to spending time with each of the remaining five stories.
Stephen King teaches that it's incumbent upon any great story to begin with a great first sentence, as this one most certainly does.
This is one part of six stories by different authors, called The Trespass Collection. It's an Amazon Kindle original series, so I think that's the only way you can access them. There's no particular order to read them in, but all have to do with nature, wildlife, the environment, etc. The other contributors are Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jeff Vanderneer, Tochi Onyebuchi, Carmen Maria Machado, and Karen Russell, all of whom are big time favorite authors of mine.
I'm looking forward to spending time with each of the remaining five stories.
March 9, 2022
How can prairie dogs possibly be scary? Stephen Graham Jones has some twisted answers to that question in his newest release "The Backbone Of The World". In a story where sorrow, anger, curiosity, and cosmic horror mix and mingle, "Backbone" follows an Indian prison widow on a quest to wipe out a colony of menacing prairie dogs...but why won't they die? And where did her mysterious boarder randomly disappear to? In a battle of human versus nature, or creature, rather, the reader ends up at the same moral crossroads as the vivacious main character. I'll let you figure out how you feel about that one for yourself as you stumble through the mangled truth all the way to the last page!
September 4, 2022
Stephen Graham Jones’ writing is so good, I even love this short story. And damned if Jones didn’t make me feel bad for prairie dogs.
The only problem with this short story is that it ended. I really super need to know what happened next…. Please? Pretty please with sugar on top? I mean, whenever you have a little extra time, of course….. or whatever. It’s cool. I’m cool. 😜
5 huge, shining stars for my main man. I really dig your work (sorry pun intended).
The only problem with this short story is that it ended. I really super need to know what happened next…. Please? Pretty please with sugar on top? I mean, whenever you have a little extra time, of course….. or whatever. It’s cool. I’m cool. 😜
5 huge, shining stars for my main man. I really dig your work (sorry pun intended).
Displaying 1 - 30 of 501 reviews