Ostensibly a story about prairie dogs and the Blackfeet (Native Americans). It went over my head! 54 pages Another free read from Amazon in March of 2022. (There is a series of 6; I won't be reading anymore!) ( )

This is an absorbing story that burrows down into increasing strangeness. I've enjoyed everything I've read by this author, and this tale is certainly no exception. ( )

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." ( )

Elderly Millie lives in a trailer alone since her husband was sentenced to twenty years in prison for accidentally running over two children. Her trailer is on a big parcel of land outside a Montana town, but she doesn't have much time left there, as the land and trailer belongs to her husband's family, and since he's not there, she needs to go. When another tribe member asks about the old camper Millie had tried to rent a year ago, Millie is happy to have the company and rent, and believes the new renter has been vetted by her friend. The woman who shows up comes at the same time as a terrible prairie dog problem that makes the land dangerous to walk and has Millie worried that it will look as is her husband didn't take care of the family land, so she throws herself into killing the prairie dogs as the strange renter stands by observing.
This is a story of loss and tribal connections that turns into a horror with a unique kind of monster. It's part of Amazon's "Trespass" collection of short stories for Kindle. ( )