Dream State
Cut along the dashed lines and pass the cards around the table.
Before we talk about anybody in the book, tell us about a house or cabin you have loved. What did it smell like when you walked in?
What was the moment you realized you were settled in and not going to put this one down? Grab the page if you still have it tabbed.
This is a book about a place people return to year after year. Where is your lake house, the spot you go back to even when it has changed? How does it feel when you get there now?
The long friendships here are as tender as the romances. Which friendship in the book made you want to call somebody, and did you actually call them?
There is so much quiet love in the small domestic stuff, meals made, rooms shared, people waiting up. Which of those ordinary moments comforted you most while you were reading?
Puchner lets us watch Montana itself warm and shift over decades. Did that make you feel grief, tenderness, or something gentler? How does it compare to a landscape you have watched change?
Living with these people across so many years feels like aging alongside them. By the last stretch, did you find yourself forgiving choices that upset you early on? What softened in you?
The book is generous toward people who hurt each other without meaning to. Did that generosity feel like a comfort or a challenge to you, and did you want to extend it to anyone in your own life?