Tell some audiences that a novel is a domestic drama, and they're likely to head for the hills. But fans of old-fashioned, multilayered storytelling at its finest will savor Dream State, Eric Puchner's generation-spanning work about family, friendship, and the fate of the planet. In 2004, med-school dropout Cece shows up at her soon-to-be in-laws' lakeside home in Montana to finish planning her wedding to Charlie Margolis, the cardiac anesthesiologist with whom she lives in Los Angeles. While there, she meets Garrett Meek, Charlie's best friend from college, "a dour-looking guy dressed like a mechanic." Garrett has reasons to be dour. For starters, he's worried about climate change. He also hasn't gotten over the skiing accident death of another college friend, a death for which Garrett feels responsible. This "morose baggage handler" is Charlie's choice to officiate their wedding.
The stampede of bad omens continues when wedding guests come down with norovirus. But Puchner and destiny have much more pain in store. That Cece dumps Charlie right after the wedding and marries nuptials-averse Garrett, who becomes a wildlife biologist specializing in the tracking of wolverines, is only the beginning. Over the next 50 years, children are born, resentments resurface, drug addictions overwhelm, and Earth's temperature rises. Dream State dips into the future but isn't particularly futuristic except for its warnings about climate change. Puchner (Music Through the Floor; Model Home) devotes most of this novel to the travails of his characters, whose lives, like all lives, are a mix of rainbows and sucker punches. Both phenomena are rendered in exquisite detail in this marvelous work. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer