Dream State

An Oprah's Book Club Pick

'The kind of book you don't want to put down, written by a master storyteller' Oprah Winfrey

'A rare pleasure... We book reviewers don't get to say much about endings, but Puchner's final chapter is one of the most touching and satisfying I've read in years' Ron Charles, Washington Post

'A shimmering saga' New York Times

'As funny as it is devastating... I haven't been this dazzled by a novel in a long time' Lit Hub

'Fresh, wise, funny, and compassionate....A reader can't help falling in head first' Boston Globe

'Gorgeous... It's being hailed by some as the next great American novel' BBC.com

'Already one of the year's best' People

'I loved Dream State. I did not stop reading it for three days straight' Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

'A book of tears, laughter, longing, regrets and filled to the brim with life . . . a wonder' Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less

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.