The First Baptist Church book review, “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”, will be presented by Etolyle Mouser, a well-known Pine Bluff educator, at 10 a.m. Saturday in the church’s fellowship hall, 6501 Hazel St.
This timeless classic novel by author Thornton Wilder was published in 1927, which surprisingly won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. Appearing deceptively simple, the small book — 117 pages — actually challenges the reader with deeply philosophical and theological questions.
When, in 1714, the unifying character Brother Juniper sees the finest bridge in Peru fall into the gulf below carrying five characters to their death, he seizes the opportunity to illustrate God’s plan. He believes that “Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.” This is the perfect laboratory for inquiring into the secret lives of those five persons to prove once and for all that this act of God is God’s plan.
After revealing his research into the lives of a wealthy but lonely aristocrat with her orphaned mind, a twin young man with a troubled past, and a talented but rogue theatrical teacher, with the young, illegitimate son of the Viceroy, Brother Juniper fails to prove his thesis about God’s plan. He and his book are burned at the stake for heresy.
The recurring theme of “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” is love — several different kinds of love. It is a harsh commentary of the Roman Catholic Church in the early 18th century in Peru because of the superficiality, its worldliness, and its reliance on the aristocracy with its wealth.
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On the other hand, it portrays the church as the ultimate agent of love and concludes that, “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival — the only true meaning.”
Wilder was born in Wisconsin in 1897, but moved to China when his father was appointed Counsel General. Then he received his early education , but returned to the United States for college at Oberlin and Yale University where he began writing. Wilder’s exquisite style and innovative episodic structure still engage the reader of 2012.
Mouser is the wife of the late William “Bill” Mouser, and the mother of two sons — Kirby Mouser and wife, Rosalind McClanahan Mouser; and Scott Mouser and wife, Tina Brumett Mouser. She has five grandchildren — Austin, Owen, Aaron, Mary Matilyn and Laura Ashey. She retired from the Pine Bluff School District having taught a total of 39 years, 28 of those were as a high school teacher of 11th and 12th grade English and 11 years were at Humphrey High School. She was chairman of the English department, state president of the English Council of Arkansas, and a member of Delta Kappa Gamma International Organization of Outstanding Teachers, where she recently was honored for 50 years of membership in the Pine Bluff Epsilon Chapter where she served as past president and on Kappa State committees. She is a member of the NEA, AEA and Arkansas Retired Teachers, where she was state president in 1998-99. Currently she is ARTA District V director. She is a member of Lakeside Methodist Church, past board chairman of Carr United Methodist Women and a member of the choir. Her hobbies are reading, traveling and spending time with her grandchildren.
The public is invited to attend the review. Door prizes and refreshments will be furnished following the review.