Eric Puchner: “Dream State” | Oprah’s Book Club
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How did Eric Puchner react to Oprah's call?
Welcome, Eric. Thank you so much. You were so stunned when I called. I was incredibly stunned when you called. In fact, my publicist had made me think that he was just calling to talk about something kind of boring.
Hello? Hello, is this Eric? Yes, it is. Eric, hi, it's Oprah Winfrey. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God.
I teach at Johns Hopkins University and I I get terrible reception in my office, so I was crouched in my car in this kind of ugly parking lot, and then it was Oprah on the line. I almost dropped the phone. I was completely astonished.
Well, it's great to have you here. I told you we were going to be in at Starbucks, Books in Conversation. And you know what you said? Oh, will I be a part of that? That's the whole idea, Eric! Hi, everybody. Welcome to Oprah's Book Club, presented by Starbucks. Hello. We're here in the gorgeous New York City, Starbucks, and we are having some interesting books, conversation, and coffee. And we are all readers here. Hello, readers. I think that your neighborhood Starbucks is a great place to get together with friends with a copy of my new book club pick and connect over a delicious cup of curated coffee. The pairing for this book is a matcha latte. My 111th book club pick is a real page turner and an emotional roller coaster. Wouldn't you say? It is the novel Dream State by Eric Hockner.
An absolute masterpiece, a wonder of character and craft. Beautiful, brilliant. One of the most anticipated books of 2025. That's just some of the literary praise for Eric Buchner's novel, Dream State. It's set among the serene lakes and picturesque mountains of Montana, which is its own dream state. This is a story about Cece, who's arrived alone in town one month early to plan her wedding. It's also about her fiancé, Charlie, who's a doctor back in Los Angeles, and his best friend Garrett, who just happens to be the officiant for their wedding. When the tumultuous wedding day arrives, Cece makes a shocking choice that affects everybody in her life. That's when Dream State becomes a story about a love triangle spanning 50 years.
This is a story of opportunity, grief, commitment, family... marriage, longing, regrets, parenthood, connection, human nature, friendship, and life. I sat down at Starbucks in New York City with the author and a cafe full of readers. Married people in here? A lot of married people? Resonated, right? The audience told us why they connected so deeply to these beautifully written characters.
Your writing style is brilliant. You create the characters, and they're so in-depth, and they keep going. When I read this line in the book, I was just immediately just like, I was like, yes. I wanted to know where the title came from and what you were thinking about it. The way that you move time along in the book is magnificent. Dream State really affected how I perceive my own marriage.
That's why Eric Buchner's Dream State is my 111th Oprah's Book Club selection. So we don't want to give away the plot, but my hope is that people buy and read the book Dream State and then come spend some time with us on this podcast to hear how you wrote this piece of art it really is. But for now, I want you to set up for us the characters and the plot. What's the story? And first of all, how did this story come to you?
Okay. Okay. Well, it didn't come to me all at once. Okay. But the story is about a lake house in Montana, northwestern Montana, in the fictional town of Salish, Montana. The lake is actually based on a real lake, Flathead Lake in Montana. And the house in the book is based on a house that I have been going to for the past 25 years every summer with my family. It's my wife's great-grandfather's house. He built it. And it was out of the family for a while, but then it came back into the family. The story about the house that it's based on is that my wife's great-grandfather was a Lithuanian Jew who immigrated to Montana. and was so destitute he lived in a packing crate for a while and then ended up starting a dry goods store and making some money that way and ended up building this house. He lived in Glasgow, Montana, but he ended up building this house on Flathead Lake in the early 1930s. It took a long time because apparently the carpenter was a total drunk.
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