Dream State

'A book of tears, laughter, longing, regrets and filled to the brim with life . . . a wonder'

ANDREW SEAN GREER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

'Dream State delivers everything I want in a novel'

ELIN HILDERBRAND, author of The Perfect Couple

'A masterpiece'

ADAM JOHNSON, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master's Son

'Brilliant'

DANIELLE EVANS, author of The Office of Historical Corrections

Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her in-laws' beautiful lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a cardiac anaesthesiologist with a brilliant future.

When Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, Cece can't imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. After all, Garrett, a depressed baggage handler at the local airport, doesn't believe in marriage. But as she spends time with him and his gruff mask slips, she grows increasingly uncertain about her future, leading to an impulsive decision that will alter the three friends' lives forever - the events of that summer reverberating across fifty years and spanning generations.

Simultaneously following in the tradition of the great American novel and reinventing it from within, Dream State is at once an elegy to the endangered West, a study of the unholy catastrophe of marriage and a tender ode to the enduring beauty of friendship.

Reports of the death of the Great American Novel have been vastly overstated . . . a decade-spanning epic that's already getting publishers excited is Eric Puchner's Dream State. It's set in Montana and traces how the events of one summer shape the lives of three friends and their children, who are vying to escape from their parents' legacies -- The best books to look out for in 2025 Independent
A book of tears, laughter, longing, regrets and filled to the brim with life. Dream State is a wonder of character and craft -- Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of LESS
Dream State is a masterpiece. A glittering, evocative achievement -- Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON
Dream State is a gorgeous exploration of time, grief, love, and the way that the commitments we make turn us into the people we become . . . brilliant -- Danielle Evans, author of THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS
Dream State delivers everything I want in a novel: a love triangle, a moving friendship story, a delicious setting (including some of the best skiing scenes I've ever read in my life) and rumination about how we search for meaning in our lives . . . an absolute masterpiece -- Elin Hilderbrand, author of THE PERFECT COUPLE
Dream State explores several monumental themes - love, family, identity, human transience, climate change - but always with a scrupulous attention to the fate of individuals, and always with a powerful sense of intimate connection . . . a remarkable achievement -- Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate
Eric Puchner has populated his engrossing and deeply affecting novel with characters so complicated and sympathetic that we want - we need - to know how their lives will turn out, and what will happen to the glorious and fragile landscape they inhabit -- Francine Prose, author of READING LIKE A WRITER
Dream State is a delight. Every scene, every character, every sentence, is infused with Eric Puchner's intelligence and wit. An exquisitely rendered novel about the vagaries of fate, and friendship, and love -- Alice McDermott, National Book Award winner and author of ABSOLUTION
Funny and wild, here is some of the most beautiful writing that I have ever read -- Matthew Klam, author of WHO IS RICH?
Lush, immersive, devastating, and stunningly alive, Dream State did the thing the very best novels do: pulled me relentlessly into its characters, its setting, concerns, losses, and triumphs, only to let me loose again with a sharper, clearer vision of the world outside -- Lynn Steger Strong, author of THE FLOAT TEST
A brilliant, sprawling epic as funny as it is devastating, Dream State unspools the aftermath of that summer over many years. I haven't been this dazzled by a novel in a long time -- Most anticipated books of 2025 Literary Hub
A gorgeous, gripping epic that chronicles 50 years of change in friendships, families and the surrounding landscape. It's being hailed by some as the next great American novel -- 40 of the most exciting books to read in 2025 BBC.com

Eric Puchner is the author of the novel Model Home, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of a California Book Award, and two collections of short stories. His fiction and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, Tin House, Best American Short Stories and more. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Eric lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.

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