The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 3 June 2007
by Thornton Wilder
"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke..." So begins this classic and engrossing novel by the author of the iconic play Our Town. This is Wilder's second novel, and in it he displays a deft hand with language and a sensitive exploration of our place in the grand scheme of things. Franciscan brother Juniper witnesses the collapse of the frail rope bridge, which takes five people with it to their deaths. Juniper, seeking some insight into the mind and plan of God, explores the life histories of these five lost souls, looking for a pattern, some link that tells us why they should all be chosen to die at that moment. The book Juniper writes is declared heretical, but the invisible narrator of this novel relates some of the essential elements of the lives lost on the bridge that day. From the erratic but brilliant letter writer María de Montemayor, to dumbfounded twin Esteban, to the scheming but driven Uncle Pio, we get, even in as short a book as this, some compelling personal portraits. All are cast on the background of colonial Peru in the early eighteenth century, provincial and still occasionally at the mercy of the Inquisition. But Peru is only a background. The reader may discern some pattern to these lives, and some connection, but in the end, the mind of God is not so easily read, much to the tragic dismay of brother Juniper, as well. In this book, we see an early example of Wilder's exhortation to his readers, or the attendees of his plays, that life is precious, every moment of it, and that love and compassion are the keys to heaven. A compelling message in a terrific book.
(For this novel, Wilder was awarded the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)