Essay Database

Set in colonial Peru in the early 18th century, The Bridge of San Luis Rey interweaves the stories of five people who die when an ancient rope bridge breaks and sends them plunging into a gulf. The book opens with an account of how a Franciscan monk named Brother Juniper witnessed the accident and spent his subsequent years amassing evidence to explain why God singled out these five for premature death. Wilder then narrates their …

…convinces her to let him take Don Jaime to Lima so that he can educate the boy as a gentleman. Pio and Don Jaime die with the others on the doomed bridge. In the last chapter the novel returns to Brother Juniper, who finally completes his vast tome about the five victims of the bridge collapse: for his efforts he is condemned as a heretic and burned, along with his book, on Lima's central square.