The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

Reading Level: Adult Fiction
Submitted by Gerti

When you choose a novel that’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, you know you’ve got a good one, and even though this is a very old work (1927) by a very old author (1897-1975), I was hooked from the opening line. “On Friday noon, July the 20^th, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated 5 travelers into the gulf below.” The book lives up to its hype, and is a truly great effort from the author.

Thornton Wilder’s novel takes that simple “fact” (it is actually fiction), and weaves it into a fascinating look at the lives of the people who died in that event, as researched and pulled together by a local monk who was trying to use their deaths to illustrate that God punishes the wicked. But what the story actually shows (and why the original copy of Brother Juniper’s work is destroyed by the church) is that their lives are not evil at all, but that the lives are ended for no fathomable reason. Young, old, good, evil, loving and innocent, the 5 people who died are not the worst in all Peru, and that is a mind-blowing concept to Brother Juniper, who so desperately looked for a divine plan to human life and death.

The 5 people are thoroughly fleshed-out characters, brilliantly drawn by Wilder. The first biography is of the Marquesa de Montemayor, who is not only a gifted writer, but a woman who loves her only child (a daughter) with an open, generous heart, even though that child never returns her affection, and in fact seems to go out of her way to plague and annoy her. Luckily, the daughter is married to a man (in faraway Spain) who appreciates the old lady, and saves the beautiful letters the Marquesa writes to his wife, letters which turn into classics of Spanish literature. The Marquesa dies accompanied by her servant and companion, Pepita, who was raised in a convent and has been given to the Marquesa so that the Mother Superior can prepare her to take over the many good works affiliated with their order. Pepita’s death shows the aged Mother Superior that despite her vain belief that the church hospital and school are important, God does not care if those good works continue after her death.

Also killed in that accident is Esteban, brother to another orphan dropped off at the Convent of Santa Maria Rosa de las Rosas. The twin boys grow up with their own secret language, and are very close to one another, until the one named Manuel falls in love with a local actress. This love pulls the brothers apart, as Manuel won’t confess his love to the woman, as he can’t imagine his brother living without him. Manuel then becomes very ill and dies, and Esteban is forced to live without him anyway. But his life has lost its meaning, and he tries suicide. A famous ship captain tries to interest him in life and the world again and he is on the journey to join that ship when God takes his life by having him fall off the bridge. Ironically, the man who trained the actress his brother was in love with also dies in the bridge accident, along with the young actress’s sickly son.