BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: A new film opened this week about the ancient effort to discern whether sudden tragedies are accidents or part of God's plan. It's THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY, from the novel about five people who were killed when a bridge collapsed. The author was Thornton Wilder, also famous for his play "Our Town." In the story, as Mary Alice Williams reports, a monk, Brother Juniper, poses the question he then tries to answer.

Brother JUNIPER: Either we live by accident or we live by a plan.

MARY ALICE WILLIAMS: It is human to question the nature of God in the face of catastrophe.

Brother JUNIPER: Why did this happen to those five?

WILLIAMS: Was it random or divine plan that these four adults and a baby came together to die on the bridge at San Luis Rey?

Brother JUNIPER: I resolve to inquire about the secret lives of those five persons.

WILLIAMS: Thornton Wilder's 1927 Pulitzer Prize-winning story is set in 18th-century Peru during the Spanish Inquisition. The narrator, Franciscan monk Brother Juniper, believes there is a divine reason for what happened and sets out to try to prove it by chronicling the lives of the dead. He discovers that each is flawed and ultimately redeemed through the selfless loving of others.

They were the Marquessa Dona Maria, rejected by her own child, who finds another child to love --

MARQUESA: My child, you are a great artist. I feel as though you were my own daughter.