The Bridge of San Luis Rey

In eighteenth-century Peru, a historic bridge connecting the cities of Cuzco and Lima collapsed, plunging five people to their deaths. A Franciscan monk, Brother Juniper, witnesses the tragedy and embarks on a spiritual quest to reconcile free will versus fate and the existence of God in the victims’ lives: “Why did this happen to those five?” This thought-provoking, Pulitzer Prize–winning second novel by American writer Thornton Wilder was called “a masterpiece” by The New York Times when it was published in 1927. Critically acclaimed, it remains a compelling literary classic exploring destiny, love, religion, and the meaning of life.
"Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well."
— Thornton Wilder (The Bridge of San Luis Rey)