The Bridge of San Luis Rey
by Thornton Wilder
Perennial Classics, 2003
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a modest yet clever book and, for me at least, a genuine lost treasure. In other words, I knew nothing about the book and had never heard of it until I read it at a Fides et Ratio seminar put on by the Faith and Reason Institute even though as an American Literature scholar I had done some study of Thornton Wilder. Most of what I knew concerned Our Town, of course, and I was also vaguely aware that his The Merchant of Yonkers (later revised as The Matchmaker) was made into the musical Hello, Dolly. Imagine my surprise to find this sweet, little gem of Catholic fiction. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (and that’s “of” not “over” as in “Bridge over Troubled Waters” or The Bridge over the River Kwai) is set in Peru in the 18th century; the bridge was real but its collapse was invented by the author. Wilder’s tale begins in July of 1714 as the bridge over a cavernous gap in the cliffs above the Apurimac River outside of Lima collapses. Five people plummet to their deaths. Their intertwining stories of how they came to be on that bridge are told through the eyes of a well-meaning, if somewhat naïve monk. This kind of event makes people question either God’s existence or God’s goodness, and Brother Juniper is determined to prove that not only did God intend for the bridge to collapse, He causes it for the good of all, especially the five who die. The book is an easy, quick read and highly entertaining. However, as one begins to think about the narration of the tales which are filtered through the participants and then through witnesses and then through Brother Jerome, the complexity of the work and the artistry of Wilder become plainly apparent. And the easy interpretation of the book becomes as shaky as walking across a rope suspension bridge high above a raging river.