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."e;As close to perfect a moral fable as we are ever likely to get in American literature."e; Russell Banks"e;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."e; The Independent (London)"e;On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below."e; 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.
