NEW YORK (AP) — Eric Puchner is a well-regarded fiction author whose new novel, “Dream State,” tells a narrative about life’s sudden and unbelievable twists.
Weeks earlier than the ebook’s launch, Puchner himself acquired some very shocking information, from Oprah Winfrey, who advised him that she had chosen “Dream State” for her ebook membership.
“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 writer is an affiliate professor at Johns Hopkins College who hopes the Winfrey endorsement would possibly mark a shift from years “toiling in obscurity,” wishing solely that he might appeal to sufficient readers to maintain writing. “Dream State” is the fourth ebook from Puchner, whose earlier works embody 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Puchner’s newest work, printed Tuesday, is a love triangle amongst two outdated school pals and the girl they each have wished to marry. Set principally in Montana and California, the 432-page narrative extends half a century from his characters’ early years to approaching outdated age as all deal with their emotions for one another and the way they think about they could in any other case have turned out.
“This is the kind of book you won’t want to put down written by a brilliant storyteller,” Winfrey mentioned in an announcement. “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 ebook was impressed partially by a disastrous marriage ceremony he as soon as attended that he re-imagined for “Dream State” and by a home in Montana that he and his spouse and two kids keep at in the summertime. The ebook touches upon the damages brought on by local weather change that he has witnessed through the years in Montana, whether or not 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 ebook membership in 1996 and presently presents it in partnership with Starbucks. Her dialog with Puchner passed off in a Starbucks within the Empire State Constructing and the video podcast could be seen on Winfrey’s YouTube channel.
