A book of tears, laughter, longing, regrets and filled to the brim with life . . . a wonder'
ANDREW SEAN GREER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

'An exquisitely rendered novel about the vagaries of fate, and friendship, and love'
ALICE MCDERMOTT, National Book Award winner and author of Absolution

'A masterpiece'
ADAM JOHNSON, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master's Son

'Brilliant'
DANIELLE EVANS, author of The Office of Historical Corrections

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, Cece can't imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. Garrett doesn't believe in love, much less marriage. But as she spends time with him and his gruff mask slips, her long-held expectations for her life with Charlie begin to crumble, leading to an impulsive decision that will alter the three friends' lives forever - the events of that July reverberating through marriage, parenthood and across generations.

Simultaneously following in the tradition of the great American novel and reinventing it from within, Dream State is at once a study of the unholy catastrophe of marriage and a tender ode to the beauty of impermanence.