Dream State Audiobook By Eric Puchner cover art

Dream State

A Novel

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Dream State

By: Eric Puchner
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
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About this listen

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

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 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic reviews

A March 2025 Indie Next Pick • One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

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 moving, psychologically acute, formally surprising family saga…Sprawling and elegant…both old-fashioned and bracingly inventive.” Kirkus Reviews *starred review*

“Puchner’s exuberant, gritty, glittering new novel…is fresh, wise, funny, and compassionate….Cinematic from the outset, Dream State opens (just as if a circular lens were unscrewing) upon a beloved old family homestead, site of a doomed wedding—descriptions so warm and attentive, a reader can’t help falling in head first…What strikes most powerfully is Puchner’s bold inhabiting of each stage, over two generations, of all these sensibilities—especially of true, if embattled, affection between men….Dream State is a wonderful feast, and feat.”Boston Globe

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An Enthralling Listen

A compelling Tale of Love and Loss and Friendship set over a lifetime in a failing environment. Beautifully crafted characters suffering the human frailties that drive us all.

Narration was perfect as well.

Two Roads diverge in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference...


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Soooo Disappointing

This is certainly not up to Oprah’s usual high standards. The book lacks depth and gets very repetitive.

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