Cherie Dimaline

"Joan has been searching for her missing husband, Victor, for nearly a year--ever since that terrible night they'd had their first serious argument hours before he mysteriously vanished. Her Me tis family has lived in their tightly knit rural community for generations, but no one keeps the old ways...until they have to. That moment has arrived for Joan. Joan turns to Ajean, an elderly foul-mouthed card shark who is one of the few among her community steeped in the traditions of her people and knowledgeable about their ancient enemies. With the help of the old Me tis and her peculiar Johnny-Cash-loving, twelve-year-old nephew Zeus, Joan must find a way to uncover the truth...Her life, and those of everyone she loves, depends upon it."--

In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and with it the dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories."

As Ruby Bloom experiences a series of traumatic childhood events, planets start to grow around her head. The planets represent everyday feelings of guilt, envy, anxiety, and a range of other common emotions. Ruby has a lot going on; her mother is eating herself to death, a soul crushing museum job, and her flamboyant best friend who humiliates and saves her in equal doses. And then there's a galaxy of odd planets that spin around her head. When Ruby's sent to New Orleans for work, she finds an astronomer in an attic that just might be the way out of her chaotic solar system.

The inspiration for the collection comes from American Poet Charles Bukowski who wrote "In between the punctuating agonies, life is such a gentle habit." Following this theme of extraordinary ordinariness, A Gentle Habit is a collection of six new short stories focusing on the addictions of a diverse group of characters attempting normalcy in an unnatural world.