Peru, Thornton Wilder, and the Luck of Destiny
Destiny. Synchronicity. Coincidence. Just after returning from Peru, and musing on the good luck that brought together 14 women to travel the back roads and highroads of modern and ancient Peru, I remembered Thornton Wilder’s 1927 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. In the novel, a Franciscan monk witnesses five people fall to their death when one of the finest bridges in all of Peru breaks and they are hurled into the gulf below. Brother Juniper spends the next six years trying to answer the question, “Why these five people?” Luckily, we 14 women had a pretty good idea what brought us together. We came from diverse parts of the world (the United States, Canada, England, even Pakistan), yet we were all drawn to the weaving culture of the Quechua women, to the stories of Peru that come alive through her narratives, and to the experiences we would hopefully capture in our journals. Qaisra Shahraz , one of the women from En...