Sorry for the delay, highly recommend using backbone-rails [1]. Reading the docs for Backbone and then the source for the adapters in that gem was really helpful. Ryan Bates also does a screen cast on it, but it costs money [2]. Nonetheless, his pro-line of casts are great if you can swing the $10/mo.
I also think backbone looks great in CoffeeScript, and since rails prefers it anyway, I think it works out. Here's a good tutorial on that: [3]