Dream State: A Novel

“Dream State is a delight…An exquisitely rendered novel about the vagaries of fate, and friendship, and love.” —Alice McDermott, National Book Award winner and author of Absolution

“A masterpiece. Dream State is a glittering, evocative achievement.” —Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son

Eric Puchner returns with an ambitious and deeply moving multigenerational novel that follows three lifelong friends and the betrayal at the center of their entwined fates.

Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws’ lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can’t imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task—an airport baggage handler haunted by a tragedy from his and Charlie’s shared past. But as she spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and her long-held expectations for her life with Charlie begin to crumble. And why does Garrett, after meeting Cece, begin to feel, well, human again? As a contagious stomach flu threatens to scuttle the wedding, and Charlie and Garrett’s friendship is put to the ultimate test, Cece makes the bravest decision of her life: to run off with the groom’s best friend.

Nine years later, Garrett is a wildlife biologist married to Cece. Charlie has invited them both back into his life. But has he truly forgiven Garrett? And can Cece, battling regret, resist the ghostly pull of the life she almost had? Spanning fifty years and set against the backdrop of a rapidly warming Montana, Dream State explores the repercussions of Cece and Garrett’s betrayal, not only on the three friends themselves but on their children, Lana and Jasper, unlikely soulmates who must grapple with mistakes from the past—both their own, and the fallout they’ve inherited. 

Written with delicacy, precision, and enormous heart, both a love letter and an elegy to the American west, Dream State is a thrillingly ambitious ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.