The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
by Thornton Wilder
read: 2011
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #37, Pulitzer Prize

I started trying to read the books in the Time 100 greatest novels list a little less than two years ago, and starting the list made me look forward to going to Maine.  My family has a place up in Wells, an old house that used to be my great-grandmothers, with has no heat or air conditioning.  A little way up the road is a used book store, and I was looking forward to picking up a few books there.  I was able to pick up some of the novels I needed, but for one I didn't have to go that far; I found a copy of Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey sitting atop an old bookshelf at the house.

That shouldn't have anything to do with my reading of Bridge, but it does.  It was a happy accident that I found the book.  When I finally read it, I found that the novel - really a few connected short stories with a wrapper tale - is a tale of an unhappy accident, a fictional bridge collapse in Peru in the early 18th century.  The premise is that a monk, Brother Juniper, witnessed the accident and wants to research the story of those killed in an attempt to determine how it was all part of God's plan.  He never is able to conclusively do so, but I wouldn't say Bridge is an atheistic work.  Instead, it suggests that God works in mysterious ways and his actions and motives are often inscrutable.  Maybe there are no accidents, but that doesn't mean we will ever understand why.