The 50-year span covered by Eric Puchner’s beautiful and sprawling novel, Dream State, takes readers deep into the lives of a tight-knit group of highly successful friends. The men — diverse racially but not class-wise — met while attending Middlebury College, and their friendships have gone through ups and downs but have never completely frayed or gone silent.
As a group, they’ve weathered multiple marriages, divorces, the birth of children, infidelity, parental death, their own physical and mental decline, and a host of career debacles. Two of the men, cardiac anesthesiologist Charlie and wildlife biologist Garrett, have a particularly strong bond, but the closeness is strained by the fact that Garrett hooked up with Charlie’s wife Cece a week after Cece and Charlie tied the knot. Although Garrett and Cece have been together ever since, decades later, the betrayal remains unaddressed. Nonetheless, it hovers close.
Cece, the only woman whose story is fully fleshed out in Dream State, runs a bookshop in tiny Salish, Montana, a town she first visited thanks to Charlie, whose parents inherited a vacation home that had been in their family for generations. The full group — whose members live in different parts of the country — reunites in Salish at least once a year.
“Dream State is a deep dive into the ways emotions and random events influence everyday relationships and choices.”
For his part, Garrett, a Montanan by birth and an avid skier, returned to Salish after dropping out of Middlebury, an act precipitated by the death of another college friend, Elias, in a freak skiing accident.
If this set-up sounds soap-opera-ish, rest assured it is not. These are characters with deep intellectual and emotional lives, and Puchner is masterful in creating a tableau in which readers can vicariously experience their trials, tribulations and triumphs. All are politically and socially savvy. The looming climate crisis — declining snowfall, depleted wildlife, raging seasonal wildfires and abnormally warm temperatures — is writ large in the book, forming a blistering backdrop, highlighting newfound restrictions on what both residents and short-term visitors can now see and do in the area.
But while every character acknowledges that climate change is having a discernible impact on their lives, it has not propelled any of them to become activists; no one is working to mobilize their neighbors to protect the land, mountains and waterways or stem the devastation. Instead they’ve hunkered down, living their lives, raising their kids, focusing on their careers and dealing with the hand they’ve been dealt.
For some, that hand has weighed heavily. Charlie’s son Jasper, for one, has lived with a serious heart condition since early adolescence and has battled drug addiction — as well as depression and anxiety — since he was a teenager. Charlie has tried mightily to help him, paying for multiple rehab stints to no avail. His daughter has also spurned him since he and her mom divorced.
Garrett, meanwhile, continues to be haunted by Elias’ death, blaming himself even though there was absolutely no way he could have foreseen the avalanche that took Elias’ life.
Still, feelings are not always rational, and Dream State is a deep dive into the ways emotions and random events influence everyday relationships and choices. Similar to our responses to climate change, our responses to personal crises can run the gamut: They can consume us, be denied or fall someplace in between.
For Charlie, festering resentment has meant stewing in rage while refusing to confront either Garrett or Cece about their treachery. He does this for years until his longstanding fury makes it impossible for him to continue doing so. Unsurprisingly, when the conflict finally erupts between the men, it isn’t what either of them expected.
“You would have made her happy and unhappy,” Garrett said. “Like I did. It just would have been different. Charlie shook his head. If Garrett thought this would console him, he’d made a grave mistake. The idea did not comfort him. In fact it was monstrous. It meant that there was no reason for her leaving him, for everything that had happened; no meaning at all.”
More than four decades later, no apology can comfort Charlie; no words can compensate for what he believes he lost.
But what can be done now? As is obvious, Garrett and Cece could have ignored their feelings for one another, but doing so would likely have undermined Charlie and Cece’s ability to settle into happily ever after.
Likewise, the pall of Elias’ death has remained a distant undercurrent in group members’ lives. Speaking about it openly might have been healthy. Then again, it might have sent Garrett back into a spiral of clinical depression or had some other unanticipated impact.
Suffice it to say that when the lid finally blows on these issues, it had been a long time coming.
Dream State is the kind of book whose characters take temporary hold of you, with situations that are so well-rendered that it’s easy to find yourself thinking about — even worrying about — the people depicted in the novel.
All told, this is a story about big themes: Familial, platonic and romantic love; life’s disappointments and challenges; and the limits of interpersonal loyalty. The environmental crisis centers the book, and Pulchner seems to be telling us that we can engage and fight for ecological sanity — or not.
Moreover, the state of Montana is vividly presented in prose that not only laments what is being lost but simultaneously celebrates Big Sky Country’s still-abundant beauty. Eloquent, passionate, and richly detailed, Dream State is a showcase for a small group of Generation Xers, a tribute to friendship, and an interrogation of human resilience despite setbacks and disappointments.
Dream State
By Eric Puchner
Doubleday; 448 pages
Release Date: March 25, 2025
