Backstabbers Summary, Characters and Themes | Eliza Jabore

Backstabbers by Eliza Jabore is a wilderness thriller about friendship, betrayal, survival and the dangerous attraction of true crime. Three childhood friends enter Olympic National Park expecting an adventurous reunion, but one woman’s concealed purpose leads them into the territory of a suspected serial killer. 

The novel examines how loyalty can become a weapon when people use shared history to excuse manipulation, secrecy and reckless behaviour. Through Jade’s transformation from an anxious follower into a determined survivor, the story questions whether courage comes from fearlessness or from acting despite fear. It also exposes the human cost of treating violence as entertainment and personal tragedy as valuable content.

Summary

Jade Edelman begins a hiking trip along the Bones Hollow Trail with Zoe Burroughs and Stefanie Alcott, her two closest friends since childhood. Their annual journeys are meant to honour a promise they made at thirteen to remain fearless, see the world together and preserve their friendship forever.

While hiking through Olympic National Park, Zoe plays a true-crime podcast about the Bones Hollow Hunter. The unidentified killer targeted female hikers, held them captive, starved them and displayed their bodies with arrows through their hearts.

Jade dislikes hearing about the murders while travelling through the same wilderness, but Zoe finds the case exciting. Stef follows Zoe’s enthusiasm, just as she has often supported Zoe’s risky decisions during their seventeen-year friendship.

Zoe convinces the group to leave the marked trail and search for a hidden waterfall she supposedly discovered online. After hours of dangerous travel, Stef falls and severely injures her ankle, forcing her to abandon the backpack containing some of their food and water-purification supplies.

Jade wants to return to the official trail, but Zoe insists they should continue south toward the waterfall and a nearby access road. The women soon become completely lost, and Zoe admits that neither the waterfall nor the road appears on her map.

After a miserable night on a steep hillside, Jade realizes that Stef’s injury is serious and that they may be days away from their vehicle. Zoe continues directing them through the forest, relying on confidence rather than reliable information.

The discovery of motorcycle tracks gives them hope that someone lives nearby. They follow the tracks past signs of a cougar and eventually hear the sound of someone chopping wood.

The women reach a secluded cabin surrounded by rusted equipment, animal remains and suspicious earthen mounds. A large, scarred man named Jeremiah welcomes them inside after examining Stef’s ankle and claiming that he can contact a park ranger.

Zoe immediately gives him false names, introducing the women as cousins. She and Stef become convinced that Jeremiah may be the Bones Hollow Hunter because the cabin contains an unstrung bow, bone ornaments and other unsettling objects.

Jeremiah contacts someone calling himself Ranger Rick over an old radio. Jade feels reassured by the apparent conversation, but Zoe and Stef secretly begin searching the cabin while Jade is left to distract their host.

Jeremiah identifies Jade as the member of the friendship who is frequently overlooked. He encourages her resentment by observing that Zoe and Stef make decisions without her and assume that she will forgive them.

He also serves Jade coffee mixed with moonshine, pressures her to drink and questions her about her romantic life. During the conversation, Jade accidentally reveals that the women met at school, contradicting Zoe’s claim that they are cousins.

Zoe and Stef discover a box of mismatched women’s jewellery beneath Jeremiah’s bed. They treat the objects as trophies, although Jade argues that there could be an innocent explanation for them.

The women later enter the attic, where Zoe steps on a rotten floorboard and drives a rusty nail into her calf. Despite the injury, she uses a hammer to break open a locked chest containing women’s clothes, including a yellow raincoat resembling one associated with a missing victim.

Zoe becomes certain that Jeremiah is the killer. She and Stef propose restraining and questioning him with dental floss, while Jade fears that their reckless investigation will provoke a violent response.

During a drinking game, Zoe uses her knowledge of card tricks to force Jeremiah to answer questions. She asks whether he recognizes the names of missing women, but he denies knowing them and initially displays no obvious sign of guilt.

Jeremiah eventually realizes that Zoe is manipulating the cards and becomes hostile. He forces the women to drink more moonshine and turns their disagreements against them, exposing the false cousin story and encouraging an argument about their friendship.

Jade finally accuses Zoe of getting them lost and treating danger as entertainment. Zoe responds that Jade avoids responsibility so that she can blame other people whenever something goes wrong, while Stef is criticized for automatically taking Zoe’s side.

The argument temporarily subsides, but Zoe becomes interested when Jeremiah mentions that he has been working in the basement. Her determination to investigate increases even though his behaviour has become steadily more threatening.

Jeremiah takes the women into a bloodstained kitchen and shows them the dead cougar whose tracks they followed earlier. He offers Zoe a claw, tooth or eye and makes disturbing comments about preferring to eat female animals.

Zoe directly confronts him about the Bones Hollow Hunter. Stef admits that she stole the jewellery box, and Zoe draws her knife, Ripley, while Jeremiah seizes a cleaver.

When Zoe moves toward him, Jeremiah slams the cleaver down and severs the upper portion of Jade’s ring finger. He claims that the injury was an accident caused by Zoe’s aggression, but the act exposes the cruelty beneath his controlled behaviour.

Zoe attacks him, and Jade is thrown against the counter and loses consciousness. When she awakens, Jeremiah has disappeared, Zoe’s nose is broken and Stef is holding Jade’s severed fingertip in the hope that doctors can reattach it.

The women barricade the kitchen door and uncover a hatch leading into the basement. Zoe admits that she did not learn about the area from a hiking website but from an online group investigating the Hunter.

The group had uncovered a report about a man named Waylon Mitchell who had been questioned at the cabin after one of the murders. Zoe deliberately planned the trip to investigate the location and continued leading them toward it even after Stef was injured.

Jade is furious that Zoe knowingly placed them in danger. Their argument is interrupted when they discover a stained sleeping pad suggesting that women may have been imprisoned in the basement.

As Jeremiah pounds on the barricaded kitchen door, the women attempt to escape through a small basement window. Stef climbs out first, but Jeremiah appears and captures her.

Jeremiah grabs Jade as she tries to follow, while Zoe pulls her back from below. He eventually releases Jade and tells her that she should stop following the wrong people.

Zoe orders Jade to separate from her and escape through the kitchen. When Jade questions the plan, Zoe slaps her before apologizing and sending her away.

Jade returns upstairs, contacts Ranger Rick and is told that help is coming. Jeremiah reenters the cabin, forcing her to smash an upstairs window and leap onto the porch awning.

After surviving the fall, Jade hides behind the shed and controls a panic attack without Zoe’s assistance. When neither friend arrives at the meeting place, she decides to return to the danger rather than abandon them.

Jeremiah finds Jade and challenges her to locate the injured Stef before he does. Jade follows tracks through the forest but ultimately returns to the cabin, where she discovers Stef tied to the couch.

Recognizing Jeremiah’s desire to be understood, Jade pretends that she accepts him and asks him to dance. During their embrace, she repeatedly stabs him with Ripley and frees Stef.

Zoe appears only after the struggle has ended. Instead of helping, she photographs Jade beside Jeremiah’s body and excitedly discusses the attention their experience could receive.

Jade realizes that Zoe and Stef both knew the real purpose of the trip. Although Stef expresses remorse, Zoe argues that Jade independently chose to kill Jeremiah and now possesses the greatest story of her life.

Detective Leeroy Bennett soon enters the cabin. Known to the women from the true-crime podcast, he confirms that Jeremiah was involved in the killings and claims that his own investigation failed because his methods made the evidence unusable.

Bennett’s behaviour changes when Jade mentions speaking to Ranger Rick. He claims that the radio operator may have been Jeremiah’s armed brother and leads the women into the forest to hide.

At a camouflaged hunting pit, they encounter a real ranger named Holton. Bennett disarms and handcuffs him before shooting him in the head.

Bennett reveals that he was the voice using the name Ranger Rick and that Jeremiah was his brother. The two men committed the murders together, with Jeremiah imprisoning and torturing the victims while Leeroy tracked and captured them.

Zoe runs away when the truth is exposed. Bennett shoots Stef in the leg and forces Jade to run through the forest while he hunts her.

Jade hides beneath leaves and ferns, but Bennett eventually finds her, cuts her back and strangles her into unconsciousness. She awakens at the bottom of the hunting pit, badly wounded and unable to climb the slick walls.

Inside the pit, Jade finds Florence Marsh’s antique compass, confirming that the missing woman had been imprisoned there. Stef eventually appears and helps Jade climb out despite her own severe injuries.

As they travel toward the cabin, Bennett shoots Stef with arrows and orders the women to run. Unable to carry her unconscious friend, Jade promises to return and races through the forest for help.

Jade eventually reunites with Zoe. Zoe initially argues that they should abandon Stef because she may already be dying, but Jade forces her to confront Stef’s loyalty and convinces her to return.

They find two hunters, Kevin and Tyler, camping nearby. The men doubt their story because Kevin knows Jeremiah and considers him harmless, but Kevin agrees to guide them back after treating Jade’s wounds.

At the cabin, Bennett uses his police badge to present himself as a trustworthy detective. He denies knowing the women and suggests that trauma has confused them.

Zoe and Jade trap Bennett and the hunters in the basement while searching for the shed keys. During their search, the remaining trust between them collapses as each suspects that the other intends to escape alone.

Jade finds the keys beneath a bed and opens the locked shed. Inside, they discover that Stef has been tortured and killed, while Jeremiah’s body and Ranger Holton’s corpse have been hidden nearby.

Zoe retrieves Stef’s phone and begins photographing the body, confirming Jade’s belief that she values evidence and publicity more than her friend’s dignity. Kevin finally believes the women, but Bennett escapes and attacks from an upper window, killing Tyler and mortally wounding Kevin with arrows.

Jade and Zoe race toward the motorcycle, fighting viciously because each believes the other will abandon her. They stop when they discover Bennett digging new graves beside the cabin.

Bennett forces them to dig while explaining that he carries the motorcycle’s only key. Jade manipulates his anger by blaming Zoe for organizing the trip and causing Jeremiah’s death.

When Bennett turns toward Zoe, Jade strikes him with a shovel. He attacks her brutally, but she recovers Ripley and stabs him through the throat and chest.

After killing him, Jade looks toward Zoe, expecting either help or abandonment. Instead, Zoe stands nearby recording the fight with Stef’s phone.

A later podcast episode announces that the Bones Hollow Hunter case has been solved. The public account identifies Bennett as the killer, misrepresents Jeremiah as someone who confronted him and presents Stef as another innocent victim who became separated from her friends.

Jade is found alive after three days in the forest, severely injured and deeply traumatized. Zoe remains missing, while the public remains unaware of her secret plan, the betrayals among the friends or the complete circumstances surrounding the deaths.

Characters

Jade Edelman

Jade is the emotional and psychological center of Backstabbers, beginning the journey as a cautious woman who depends on Zoe to make decisions and define what bravery looks like. Her anxiety is not simple weakness, because she often recognizes genuine dangers long before her friends are willing to acknowledge them.

Years of being dismissed have trained Jade to distrust her own judgment. Zoe and Stef repeatedly leave her behind, minimize her distress and interpret every fortunate outcome as proof that their behaviour was acceptable.

Jeremiah exploits these wounds by describing Jade as the forgotten member of the group. His observations are manipulative, but they affect her because they contain truths she has refused to examine.

Jade’s development is shown through increasingly independent actions. She escapes through an upstairs window, controls her own panic attack, returns to rescue Stef and defeats both Jeremiah and Leeroy without waiting for Zoe to lead her.

Her courage does not erase her fear or guilt. She remains horrified by the violence she commits, and killing two murderers leaves her with moral injuries that cannot be removed by calling her a hero.

Jade’s final relationship with Zoe is intentionally uncertain. After discovering Zoe recording the second killing, she must decide whether friendship, justice and survival can coexist with the knowledge that Zoe may turn her trauma into another public story.

Zoe Burroughs

Zoe is charismatic, fearless and energetic, qualities that once made her the natural leader of the friendship. Within Backstabbers, those strengths gradually reveal a darker side because her confidence is sustained by secrecy, manipulation and an assumption that other people will absorb the consequences of her choices.

Her investigation of the Bones Hollow Hunter is not merely curiosity. She invents the waterfall, conceals the cabin’s history and continues the expedition after Stef becomes badly injured, demonstrating that solving the case matters more to her than informed consent.

Zoe treats reality as a story in which she expects to occupy the most important role. She repeatedly imagines headlines, photographs and film adaptations even while Jade and Stef are injured, frightened or dying.

Her supposed bravery is also selective. She willingly provokes Jeremiah when she believes she controls the situation, but she runs when Leeroy reveals himself and later argues that they should abandon Stef.

Zoe can be resourceful, persuasive and observant. She identifies the cabin correctly, manipulates card games, influences Kevin by mentioning his daughter and devises escape strategies, yet these abilities are directed by ambition rather than dependable loyalty.

Her final decision to record Jade’s struggle confirms that she has not learned from Stef’s death. She remains focused on capturing proof and controlling the future account, leaving her fate uncertain but her betrayal unmistakable.

Stefanie Alcott

Stef is the third member of the friendship and often acts as Zoe’s supporter. Her willingness to follow Zoe initially appears cheerful and loyal, but it becomes clear that she knowingly participated in the plan to investigate the cabin.

Her complicity distinguishes her from Jade. Stef understood that the waterfall was invented and still allowed Jade to enter a dangerous situation without knowing the truth.

At the same time, Stef possesses more compassion than Zoe. She worries about Jade’s severed finger, helps preserve the missing fingertip and later risks her life to pull Jade from the hunting pit.

Stef’s desire to remain positive often prevents her from confronting harmful behaviour. Just as she struggles to leave her controlling boyfriend, Jeff, she struggles to oppose Zoe even when Zoe’s decisions become dangerous.

Her death is especially tragic because she begins to act independently only after the group has been destroyed. She refuses to abandon her friends, but the loyalty she offers is not returned with equal strength.

The discovery of her tortured body exposes the full cost of Zoe’s obsession and Leeroy’s cruelty. Zoe’s decision to photograph her corpse also proves that even death cannot fully protect Stef from being used by others.

Jeremiah

Jeremiah initially presents himself as a strange but generous recluse. His Southern charm, apparent hospitality and willingness to contact a ranger allow him to control the women without immediately resorting to force.

His cabin reflects both his violence and his ability to hide it beneath craftsmanship. Bone furniture, animal remains, boarded windows and women’s possessions create an environment in which living beings are reduced to objects.

Jeremiah is skilled at identifying emotional weaknesses. He isolates Jade psychologically, encourages conflict among the friends and shifts between friendliness and hostility to keep them uncertain.

His account of an abusive childhood offers context without excusing his actions. Rather than breaking the cycle of cruelty, he transforms suffering into a justification for imprisoning, starving and killing women.

The severing of Jade’s finger reveals his need to control both violence and its interpretation. He commits the act deliberately but immediately calls it an accident, attempting to make Zoe responsible for what he chose to do.

Jeremiah’s death comes when Jade uses his desire for intimacy against him. He believes he has finally convinced her to accept him, but the emotional control he values becomes the means through which she defeats him.

Detective Leeroy Bennett

Leeroy is more dangerous than Jeremiah because he combines predatory violence with institutional authority. His position as a detective allows him to influence investigations, protect his brother and present himself publicly as someone committed to finding the killer.

His appearance initially comforts Jade because she recognizes him from the podcast. That familiarity demonstrates how easily public visibility can be mistaken for trustworthiness.

Leeroy divides the murders with Jeremiah according to their different desires. Jeremiah enjoys captivity and torture, while Leeroy is excited by pursuit, tracking and the power of deciding when a victim will be captured.

Unlike Jeremiah, Leeroy rarely seeks emotional understanding. His cruelty is calculated, patient and connected to the pleasure he receives from controlling frightened people in the wilderness.

His murder of Ranger Holton shows that he treats his badge as a weapon. He can create an official-looking version of events, disarm an innocent man and kill him while expecting the survivors to doubt their own judgment.

Leeroy’s final defeat results from his confidence that Jade remains psychologically weaker than he is. He fails to understand that she has learned how predators use anger, vanity and divided attention, enabling her to manipulate him before striking.

Ranger Holton

Holton represents legitimate public service and the possibility of genuine rescue. He approaches the hunting pit while performing his duties and attempts to cooperate when Bennett identifies himself as a detective.

His death demonstrates the destructive power of misplaced institutional trust. Because Bennett possesses authority, Holton lowers his weapon and becomes vulnerable before he understands the danger.

Holton’s murder also removes one of the few people capable of ending the situation without personal motives. His body is later hidden beside the other victims, reducing an honourable ranger to another obstacle Leeroy believes he can erase.

Kevin

Kevin initially illustrates the difficulty survivors face when their accounts challenge familiar assumptions. Because he knows Jeremiah as a quiet recluse, he finds it easier to doubt two injured women than reconsider his opinion of a man he recognizes.

His response begins to change when Zoe asks him to imagine his pregnant daughter seeking help after an attack. The question forces him to connect the women’s condition with someone he already considers worthy of protection.

Kevin nevertheless remains cautious and indecisive. He treats Bennett’s badge as stronger evidence than Jade’s wounds, showing how official authority can overpower visible signs of violence.

His eventual decision to support Jade at the shed comes too late to save him. Even so, his willingness to confront Leeroy marks a partial moral correction before he is struck by an arrow.

Tyler

Tyler is more dismissive than Kevin and quickly accepts Bennett’s explanation that trauma has confused Jade and Zoe. His reaction demonstrates how easily injured women can be classified as unreliable when a confident man offers a more comfortable account.

He follows Kevin’s decisions rather than independently examining the evidence. This passivity makes him vulnerable to Leeroy’s deception and prevents him from recognizing the danger until the attack begins.

Tyler’s death is sudden and brutal, with an arrow piercing his throat. His fate shows that disbelief does not protect bystanders from the violence they refuse to confront.

Laurie Wolff

Laurie Wolff is the podcast host whose episodes provide information about the Bones Hollow Hunter. Her reporting helps preserve public interest in the missing and murdered women, but it also packages their suffering as suspenseful entertainment.

The final episode reveals the limitations of her storytelling. Laurie confidently repeats an incomplete official account that hides Jeremiah’s guilt, misrepresents Stef’s death and overlooks the betrayals that caused the expedition.

Her interest in obtaining an exclusive interview with Jade shows how quickly survival can become content. Rather than asking whether Jade should be left alone, she assumes that the survivor will eventually want to convert her trauma into a public narrative.

Laurie therefore resembles Zoe in an important way. Both women treat terrible experiences as stories whose value increases when they can offer new evidence, dramatic revelations or access to someone else’s pain.

Florence Marsh

Florence never appears alive, but her absence shapes the entire story. As the suspected final victim of the Hunter, her unexplained disappearance helps attract Zoe to the investigation.

The discovery of her antique compass in the hunting pit confirms that she was captured and imprisoned. The object transforms her from an unresolved podcast mystery into a real woman who suffered alone in the same place where Jade later awakens.

Florence also becomes a silent source of strength for Jade. Finding the compass allows Jade to understand that the pit has been escaped emotionally, even if not physically, through the evidence Florence left behind.

The Bones Hollow Victims

The murdered hikers are frequently introduced through names, possessions and details about their deaths. The investigation initially reduces them to clues, patterns and podcast episodes, reflecting the way true-crime audiences can forget the full humanity of victims.

Their jewellery, clothes, teeth and personal objects reveal how Jeremiah and Leeroy turned individual women into collections. Each stolen object allowed the killers to preserve control long after death.

Jade’s experiences restore emotional meaning to their suffering. Starvation, isolation, pursuit and captivity stop being dramatic facts once she endures similar terror herself.

The victims also expose institutional failure. Leeroy’s ability to interfere with police work means their cases remained unresolved not because evidence did not exist, but because a trusted official protected the murderer.

Jeff

Jeff never enters the wilderness plot directly, but his controlling relationship with Stef adds important context to her behaviour. Stef is considering leaving him, suggesting that she recognizes the need for independence but has not yet learned how to act on that recognition.

Her difficulty challenging Jeff parallels her inability to oppose Zoe. In both relationships, Stef mistakes accommodation for loyalty and allows a stronger personality to determine what risks she must accept.

Jeff’s unseen presence therefore contributes to Stef’s tragedy. She enters the expedition already accustomed to suppressing disagreement, making it easier for Zoe to secure her cooperation with a plan that endangers all three women.

Themes

Betrayal Within Friendship

The central danger in Backstabbers begins before the women meet either killer. Zoe and Stef betray Jade by hiding the purpose of the expedition, removing her ability to make an informed decision about entering the wilderness.

Their deception is particularly destructive because it depends on seventeen years of trust. Jade follows Zoe away from the trail not because the plan is sensible, but because shared history has taught her that loyalty means accepting Zoe’s leadership.

Betrayal continues through abandonment. Zoe leaves Jade alone with Jeremiah, runs when Leeroy reveals himself and suggests leaving Stef after she is struck by arrows.

The friendship is also damaged by the difference between responsibility and blame. Zoe insists that Jade independently chose to kill Jeremiah, using personal agency as an excuse to deny the conditions she deliberately created.

Stef’s betrayal is quieter but still serious. She knows the truth and participates in the deception, yet her later sacrifices show that remorse can exist even when the harm cannot be repaired.

The final recordings represent the most complete betrayal. By filming Jade’s violence instead of helping her, Zoe transforms a friend’s struggle for survival into material she can control, proving that she values possession of the story more than the relationship itself.

Fear, Courage and Self-Reliance

Jade initially believes courage belongs to people like Zoe, who enter caves, leave marked trails and speak confidently in dangerous situations. Her own fear appears to separate her from the adventurous identity the friends created as teenagers.

The events at the cabin gradually challenge this definition. Zoe’s fearlessness often resembles recklessness because she ignores evidence, conceals risks and assumes that confidence can protect everyone from consequences.

Jade’s fear, by contrast, gives her useful information. She notices Jeremiah’s hostility, questions the radio call, recognizes the danger of the basement and understands that the women cannot rely on luck forever.

Her transformation does not require fear to disappear. She acts while frightened, injured and uncertain, making her bravery more meaningful than Zoe’s desire to perform courage.

Jade also learns to manage herself without external reassurance. She controls a panic attack behind the shed, escapes through a window, returns for Stef and survives the hunting pit through repeated effort.

Self-reliance does not turn her into an emotionless action hero. She remains capable of guilt, grief and doubt, demonstrating that strength can include psychological pain rather than denying it.

By the conclusion, Jade no longer needs Zoe to define who is brave. Her actions prove that courage is the willingness to accept responsibility and protect another person even when survival would be easier through abandonment.

True Crime and the Commodification of Suffering

The podcast introduces murder as a form of entertainment consumed during a hiking trip. Zoe listens with excitement because the victims’ fear is distant enough to function as mystery rather than immediate human pain.

Her investigation reproduces this detachment. She seeks the cabin because solving the case would give her access to a dramatic discovery, but she does not seriously consider what the search could do to Jade or Stef.

Photography becomes the clearest sign of exploitation. Zoe photographs Jeremiah’s body, Stef’s corpse and Jade’s fight with Leeroy because images allow her to claim ownership over the story.

Laurie Wolff continues the same process on a public scale. Her podcast transforms incomplete information into a polished narrative and promises future updates before the survivors have had time to understand what happened.

The official version also shows how public stories simplify complicated events. Stef becomes an innocent victim separated from her friends, Jeremiah becomes a man who supposedly confronted the killer and Jade becomes a survivor expected to provide an interview.

These versions are easier to consume because they remove manipulation, guilt and moral uncertainty. The audience receives a solved mystery, while the women’s real relationships remain hidden.

The novel does not argue that investigating crimes is inherently wrong. It instead questions what happens when curiosity, fame and narrative satisfaction become more important than consent, accuracy and respect for the dead.

Manipulation, Control and Institutional Trust

Control appears in personal relationships, criminal violence and public institutions. Zoe controls her friends through charm and shared history, while Jeremiah controls victims through physical confinement, emotional pressure and unpredictable changes in behaviour.

Leeroy expands this pattern by using professional authority. His badge allows him to shape investigations, discredit witnesses and convince others that his version of reality deserves automatic acceptance.

Jade is repeatedly pressured to surrender her judgment. Zoe tells her where to walk, Jeremiah tells her what her friends think of her and Leeroy presents himself as the only trustworthy protector available.

The hunters demonstrate how authority influences belief. Kevin and Tyler can see Jade’s injuries, yet they hesitate because Bennett’s badge offers a simpler explanation than accepting that a detective may be a murderer.

Manipulation also depends on identifying what another person wants. Jeremiah offers Jade recognition, Zoe offers adventure, Laurie offers survivors public importance and Leeroy offers the appearance of rescue.

Jade survives once she begins using this knowledge against her attackers. She gives Jeremiah the acceptance he desires and directs Leeroy’s hatred toward Zoe long enough to create an opening.

Her victories show that understanding manipulation does not make it harmless. Even after the killers are dead, Jade must live with the effects of having her trust, fear, loyalty and violence repeatedly controlled by other people.