THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

Famous American playwright, Thornton Wilder, won the Pulitzer Prize three times:  “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”, in 1928, “Our Town”, in 1938 and “The Skin of Our Teeth”, in 1943.  Thornton Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1897 and died in Hamden, Connecticut, in 1975.

The finest bridge in Peru, the Bridge of San Luis Rey, breaks on July 20, 1714, and with it, five people fall to their deaths.  Father Juniper, an Italian by birth, busy coverting the Indians in Peru, witnessed the fall of the bridge.  The tragedy afforded Father Juniper’s long sought initiative, to justify God’s way to men.  Father Juniper had crossed the bridge some moments before, and the tragedy caused him to wonder why certain people fell and not others.  To prove his theory, that religion is a science, Father Juniper launches an intense investigation into the lives of the victims that takes years.