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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK

Praised by People as “the story of bonds created and undone, choices passed down and repeated, and the remarkable courage it takes to start over—already one of the year’s best.”

Cece believes she’s found true love. She arrives ahead of schedule at the lake house in Salish, Montana, belonging to her fiancé’s parents, ready to finalize preparations for her wedding. Her future husband, Charlie, is a promising young doctor, seemingly destined for greatness. To her dismay, Charlie has asked Garrett—his college best friend—to be the officiant. Cece can’t think of anyone less suited for such an important role. Garrett, whose life as an airport baggage handler is haunted by a painful shared history with Charlie, initially seems gruff and distant. Yet over the days before the ceremony, cracks begin to appear in his tough exterior, forming an unexpected closeness with Cece that leaves her questioning the path of her future. Meanwhile, meeting Cece awakens something long buried in Garrett, leaving him feeling genuinely alive again.

As preparations unfold, a contagious stomach flu threatens to derail the carefully planned wedding, and lingering tensions put Charlie and Garrett’s friendship to a critical test. Cece faces an agonizing decision between the life she had always envisioned and a future she never dreamed possible.

The events at the lake house ripple outward, influencing the three friends for decades and echoing down through their children’s lives, as the younger generation struggles to free themselves from their parents’ complicated history. Spanning half a century against the vivid backdrop of a Montana landscape transformed by climate change, Dream State portrays how individuals reckon with past mistakes, both those they’ve committed and those they’ve inherited.

Told with humor, sensitivity, and remarkable insight, Dream State is both a heartfelt tribute and a bittersweet farewell to the American West. This ambitious novel beautifully captures the complexity of friendship, the turbulent intimacy of marriage, and the grace in accepting life’s impermanence.