Literary solace for Kennedy tragedy

Not long after the JFK assassination in 1963, I
   recall reading Thornton Wilder's " The Bridge of
   San Luis Rey " :
       On a Friday in July in the year 1714 a famous
   bridge in Peru collapses. Five people-who become
   major characters in the novel-fall to their deaths
   in the deep gorge below.
       A certain thoughtful friar, Brother Juniper,
   who witnessed the tragedy, is determined to investigate
   the victims' lives, to make sense of it all, to uncover
   a pattern that would reveal the divine wisdom in the
   disaster.
      When his book is finished, the pious man is astonished
   to learn that it is condemned by the Church authorities:
      " He had gone too far in explaining God's ways to
        humanity. "
      Brother Juniper is to be burned at the stake. He
   meekly sees his own death as part of the divine plan.
      But another more skeptical character concludes :
   " There is a land of the living and a land of the
     dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the
     only meaning. "

        " All those impulses of love return to the love
          that made them. "