I recently received a text from an old college friend after barely speaking for a decade. Once as close as sisters, we had not necessarily had a falling out but a quiet drifting away due to hurts we both struggled to name. In this text she expressed how much she missed our friendship and a desire to move forward with a clean slate. My response was immediate: “I absolutely want to move forward. I am sorry too. Of course I want you in my life.” There’s something sacred about the friendships we form in young adulthood. Why is this? Maybe because in our early 20’s, we are still figuring out who we are outside the structure of childhood and family. Friendships formed during this time are often deeply emotional, sometimes codependent, sometimes messy. We make rash decisions with our not-completely-cooked prefrontal cortex, often with little regard to consequences or who we may hurt in the process. Dream State by Eric Puchner is a moving exploration of those deep early bonds and the ways they grow, fracture, and (sometimes) survive over decades. This novel explores the deep-rooted complexity of these relationships and what it means to accept one another, flaws and all.
What begins as a love triangle among college friends Cece, Garrett, and Charlie stretches into a lifelong emotional entanglement. When Cece chooses one man over the other, friendships understandably fracture – permanently, one would think. And yet, somehow, they find their way back into each other’s lives. The relationships change but never dissolve. The betrayal inevitable in Cece’s choice shapes the course not only of their lives but the lives of their children. And yet, there is an unspoken decision to stay connected. The loss of the friendship would be more devastating than the betrayal. I was reminded that sometimes the people who become our true family are the ones who stay when life gets complicated.
The book follows the three friends into middle age, where it explores the complexity of marriage through an often-skeptical lens, quoting Voltaire: “Marriage, the only adventure open to the cowardly.” Initially I interpreted this to mean that marriage is a refuge for those who do not want to be alone. By the end of the novel, however, I read it differently. The true challenge for the characters was not the decision to marry but the decision to stay. “For better or worse,” Puchner writes, “he loved her imperfectly.” Puchner also touches on how a marriage shapes how children view relationships: “Can kids ever see their parents’ marriage for what it is? It wasn’t supposed to look like work…but what if the work itself was the point?”
This idea of relational work applies to friendship as well. Some of the most enduring relationships in life aren’t defined by blood or vows, but by history, memory, and quiet loyalty. Puchner explores the gray, messy, deeply human territory where friends become family, and where forgiveness – more than love – becomes the truest act of devotion. One thing I took away from this novel was the idea of forgiveness as an ongoing process. We can attempt to repair ruptures in relationships, but the memory of the hurt does not always disappear. It may live beneath the surface, and at times, resentment may rear its head. In those moments, we have a choice to cling to anger or to decide (sometimes over and over again), to release it.
Sometimes this lengthy novel (464 pages) tries to do too much. Set in Montana, with beautiful descriptions of its wild beauty, the novel tracks the escalation of climate change which mirrors the radically shifting landscape of the characters’ lives. While I found this subplot both frightening and fascinating, it at times took up space that could have been better devoted to deepening the reader’s connection to the characters.
Since finishing the book, I am still pondering the difference between acceptance and forgiveness. We are all flawed people. Relationships don’t always look the way we think they should. In Puchner’s world, deep connection is what sustains us. Instead of offering tidy resolutions, Puchner pushes the reader to lean into impermanence and accept that life does not go according to plan. This is not just a story about romantic love, but about friendship, the mistakes we carry, and the grace we can find in forgiving ourselves and others.