NEW YORK (AP) — Eric Puchner is a well-regarded fiction writer whose new novel, “Dream State,” tells a story about life’s unexpected and improbable twists.
Weeks before the book’s release, Puchner himself received some very surprising news, from Oprah Winfrey, who told him that she had chosen “Dream State” for her book club.
“I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize,” the author said during a recent interview. “When the caller said she was Oprah Winfrey I nearly dropped the phone I was so baffled. I was expecting to talk to my publicist, and at first, I didn’t believe her. But then she started to talk in that inimitable way.”
The 54-year-old author is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who hopes the Winfrey endorsement might mark a shift from years “toiling in obscurity,” wishing only that he could attract enough readers to keep writing. “Dream State” is the fourth book from Puchner, whose previous works include the story collections “Music Through the Floor” and “Last Day on Earth” and the novel “Model Home,” a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2011.
Puchner’s latest work, published Tuesday, is a love triangle among two old college friends and the woman they both have wished to marry. Set mostly in Montana and California, the 432-page narrative extends half a century from his characters’ early years to approaching old age as all contend with their feelings for each other and how they imagine they might otherwise have turned out.
“This is the kind of book you won’t want to put down written by a brilliant storyteller,” Winfrey said in a statement. “Spanning fifty years, ‘Dream State’ is an exquisite examination of the important relationships we have in our lives — love, marriage, friendship — and how life can turn out so differently than we expected.”
Puchner is a Baltimore resident who says the book was inspired in part by a disastrous wedding he once attended that he re-imagined for “Dream State” and by a house in Montana that he and his wife and two children stay at in the summer. The book touches upon the damages caused by climate change that he has witnessed over the years in Montana, whether drought or hotter temperatures.
“I know that I wanted to write about this place that I love and what was happening to it,” he says.
Winfrey established her book club in 1996 and currently presents it in partnership with Starbucks. Her conversation with Puchner took place in a Starbucks in the Empire State Building and the video podcast can be seen on Winfrey’s YouTube channel.
