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The bridge of San Luis Rey

by Wilder, Thornton, 1897-1975.

Format: Print Book 2004
Availability: Available at 3 Libraries 3 of 4 copies

Available (3)
Location Collection Call #
CLP - Main Library First Floor - Fiction Stacks FICTION Wilder,
Location  CLP - Main Library
 
Collection  First Floor - Fiction Stacks
 
Call Number  FICTION Wilder,
 
 
Northern Tier Regional Library Fiction FIC WILDE
Location  Northern Tier Regional Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  FIC WILDE
 
 
Upper St. Clair Township Library Classics CLASSICS WILDER Thornton
Location  Upper St. Clair Township Library
 
Collection  Classics
 
Call Number  CLASSICS WILDER Thornton
 
 
 
Unavailable (1)
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CLP - Main Library First Floor - Fiction Stacks CHECKED OUT
Location  CLP - Main Library
 
Collection  First Floor - Fiction Stacks
 
Status  CHECKED OUT
 
 

Summary

The definitive edition of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic with a foreword by acclaimed author Russell Banks and an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating documentary material about the novel and its rich literary history.

"As close to perfect a moral fable as we are ever likely to get in American literature." --Russell Banks

"There are books that haunt you down the years, books that seem to touch and stir something deep inside you. . . . Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey is of this kind." --The Independent (London)

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." This immortal sentence opens The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American literature, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a novel still read throughout the world.

Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk, witnesses the tragic event. Deeply moved, he embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention, not chance, that led to the deaths of the five people crossing the bridge that day. Ultimately, his search leads to a timeless investigation into the nature of fate and love, and the meaning of the human condition.

Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "Few novels identify their basic plotline as succinctly and forthrightly as the opening line of Thornton Wilder's 1927 novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey: On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below. The novel's conceit is this: a certain Brother Juniper was himself about to step out onto the bridge when it broke and subsequently witnessed the plunge of five people into the abyss below. Brother Juniper wonders if the tragedy happened according to a divine plan or was simply a random instance of misfortune. His curiosity leads him to investigate the lives of the five victims to prove that the bridge collapse and the resulting deaths were indeed divine intervention that God intended for them to die then and there. But, of course, the point of the novel is that there is no commonality among them, other than the fact that they are all simply human, with their own frailties. Wilder ends his at-once urgent and serene novel with this haunting passage: But soon we shall die and all memory of these five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. 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. --Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Additional Information
Subjects Bridges -- Accidents -- Fiction.
Accident victims -- Fiction.
Peru -- Fiction.
Publisher New York :HarperCollins,2004
Language English
Description xvii, 138 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN 9780060580612
0060580615
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