Bridge of San Luis Rey, The

Bridge of San Luis Rey, The, novel by Thornton Wilder, published in 1927 and awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1714 a bridge over a canyon near Lima, Peru, collapses, and five travelers are killed. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan, resolves to help place theology “among the exact sciences” by proving the catastrophe to be an act of divine providence. He collects the results of his six years of investigation in a great book, which is pronounced heretical. He and his book are burned at the stake, but a copy survives, and from it comes these stories of the five who fell with the bridge…. The Marquesa de Montemayor has devoted her life to her daughter Clara, a bril‐liant, selfish woman who goes to Spain after her marriage. The Marquesa's wonderful letters are now her only way of showing her affection, but through her companion, the child Pepita, the Marquesa discovers she has not had true love for Clara and decides to reform. Two days later she and Pepita die on the bridge…. The twins Manuel and Esteban, who feel an intense fraternal bond, become scribes and lead a solitary life together. The actress La Périchole employs Manuel to write her letters, but when an infatuation threatens to separate him from his brother, Manuel ends their connection. He dies soon afterward, and the despairing Esteban, prevented from suicide, signs for a voyage as seaman, but is killed on the bridge…. Through the teaching of the old rogue Uncle Pio, La Périchole is the most celebrated of actresses, and mistress of the viceroy, to whom she has borne three children. Socially ambitious, she leaves the stage, but her beauty is ravaged by smallpox, and heartbroken she retires to seclusion, devoid of interest except in her son Jaimé. Uncle Pio persuades her to let the boy go with him for a year to begin his education, but Pio and Jaimé die in the fall of the bridge.