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Dream State

A Novel

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Dream State

By: Eric Puchner
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About this listen

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

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 Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future. 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 must decide between the life she’s dreamed of and a life she’s never imagined.

The events of that summer have long-lasting repercussions, not only on the three friends caught in its shadow but also on their children, who struggle to escape their parents’ story. Spanning fifty years and set against the backdrop of a rapidly warming Montana, Dream State explores what it means to live with the mistakes of the past—both our own and the ones we’ve inherited.

Written with humor, 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.

©2025 Eric Puchner (P)2025 Random House Audio
Family Life Friendship Literary Fiction
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Critic reviews

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

“Filled to the brim with life, Dream State is a wonder of character and craft.”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less is Lost

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