On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below is the celebrated opening of this 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Brother Juniper a Franciscan monk witnesses the tragedy and contemplates why were these 5 souls vs. another 5 souls doomed. He decides to investigate their lives and determine the divine reason for this tragedy-at one point devising a grading system for people ranking goodness, piety, and usefulness.

Wilder who received a Masters in French from Princeton openly admitted that the first character the Friar investigated- the Marquesa de Montemayor was based on Madame de Sevigne-famous for her collected letters to her daughter which along with several other of Thornton Wilder’s works is now next on my reading list. The Friar’s investigations take approximately 6 years and during that period the Marquesa’s letters to her daughter are published and become a cause celebre as well as providing invaluable insight into the character of the Marquesa.

The five victims include the Marquesa, her companion, a scribe whose is a twin, a friend/mentor of The Perichole and The Perichole’s son. The investigations act as flashbacks and as the reader you learn the history of each of the 5 victims and how their stories are intertwined whether through the Abbess or the celebrated Actress The Perichole. Through the five you experience a broad spectrum of Peruvian society-the Aristocracy, life in the theater, convent life, the life of twins, an explorer and the struggle of the poor. I was surprised at how in depth the depictions were given that this is a rather short novel (a bone of contention for Wilder’s publisher who decided in the original printing to add illustrations and very large margins to make the book appear larger).

One of the reasons I loved the Bridge of San Luis Rey is that Wilder does not answer the question of why but allows the reader to contemplate all of the moral ambiguity in tragedy. He allows you to be the arbiter on the “correctness” of each individual’s fate including the Friar and he does this in a writing style that is clear and direct.

The last few sentences have often been quoted and quite simply are beautiful:
“But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”