1928 The Bridge of San Luis Rey
1928
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thorton Wilder
235 pages
Summary
Part One: Brother Juniper, an earnest friar in Lima, Peru, recounts an accident in which the ropes of an ancient Incan bridge break one day for no apparent reason, sending five people to their deaths. He scientifically investigates the lives of the victims, to determine whether the tragic failure of the bridge was part of God's Plan.
Part Two: A Marquesa foolishly dotes upon her daughter Clara, a girl who is cruelly indifferent to her mother. Once Clara has married brilliantly and moves to Spain, the Marquesa takes a companion, Pepita. Pepita is an orphan raised and mentored by the Abbess in a nearby convent. From Pepita's humble example, the Marquesa learns what it means to live bravely. She and Pepita are both killed in the bridge collapse.
Part Three: Orphaned twin brothers, Manuel and Esteban, are also raised by the Abbess. The twins are preternaturally close, until Manuel falls in love with a cabaret singer, La Perichole. She treats Manuel very badly, driving a wedge between the brothers. Nevertheless, when Manuel dies from an infection, Esteban loses his mind for grief. He is rescued from madness by Captain Alvarado, who convinces Esteban to come on a sea voyage. On his way to the ship, Esteban is killed in the bridge collapse.
Part Four: Uncle Pio is the bastard son of an aristocrat. He makes a living in the demi-monde of Lima. He discovers a girl, Camilla, at age 12 and trains her to become "LaPerichole," a famous singer and the eventual mistress of the colonial Viceroy. When the pox leaves her face disfigured, she flees to the country. She agrees to let Uncle Pio rescue her young son, Jaime, from their strange, isolated life. While en route to the city, Uncle Pio and Jaime are killed in the bridge collapse.
Part Five: Using various mathematical quantifications, Brother Juniper spends six years trying to determine God's purpose in creating the bridge collapse. The Church does not look kindly upon his scientific inquiry. Meanwhile, the Abbess, who raised two of the people killed on the bridge that day, fears that her life's work was destroyed when her proteges were killed. When two women come seeking answers of her, the Abbess finds the purpose of her life again.
Adaptations
Screenwriters have consistently failed to translate the beauty of this novel to film. Thorton Wilder is arguably America's best playwright, having authored Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker. So isn't it ironic that the adaptations of this novel are universally awful? Don't waste your time tacking down the 1944 film; it barely makes sense. Similarly, the 2004 version of the film has a 4 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. My advice instead is to see a performance of Wilder's play Our Town, an enduring classic in high school and college drama departments, as well as professional theatres. You can clearly hear the echoes in the play of Wilder's sympathetic approach to human frailty.
Related Activities
Most people do not live near an ancient Incan rope bridge. However, if you want to test the stability of modern bridges, drive across the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit to Ontario. At 7490 feet long, the Ambassador Bridge is the longest international suspension bridge in the world. And still holding up well.
If you want to see the inner workings of a bascule-truncheon bridge, visit the McCormack Bridge Museum in Chicago at Michigan Avenue and the Chicago River.
http://www.bridgehousemuseum.org/plan-a-visit
Maybe you don't want to crawl around the gears of a working bridge. Not to worry--you can see the stirring sight from street level. From mid-April to late June, boaters transfer their watercraft to Lake Michigan for the season. To accommodate their passage, all 27 bridges of the Chicago River are lifted sequentially, beginning at 8 am Saturdays and 9:30 on Wednesdays. There is nothing like a disaster story--and that's what this novel is--to make us appreciate our own stolid world in which the bridges run on schedule.
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