Sanctuary is a 1931 novel by American author William Faulkner about the rape and abduction of an upper-class Mississippi college girl, Temple Drake, during the Prohibition era. The novel was Faulkner's commercial and critical breakthrough and established his literary reputation, but was controversial given its themes. It is said Faulkner claimed it was a "potboiler", written purely for profit, but this has been debated by scholars and Faulkner's own friends. The novel provided the basis for the films The Story of Temple Drake (1933) and Sanctuary (1961). It also inspired the novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish as well as the film of the same title and The Grissom Gang, which derived from No Orchids for Miss Blandish. The story of the novel can also be found in the 2007 film Cargo 200. Faulkner later wrote Requiem for a Nun (1951) as a sequel to Sanctuary. Plot summary The novel is set in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi and takes place in May and June 1929. In May 1929, Horace Benbow, a lawyer frustrated with his life and family, suddenly leaves his home in Kinston, Mississippi, and hitchhikes his way back to Jefferson, his hometown in Yoknapatawpha County. There, his widowed sister, Narcissa Sartoris, lives with her son and her late husband's great-aunt, Miss Jenny. On the way to Jefferson, he stops for a drink of water near the "Old Frenchman" homestead, which is occupied by the bootlegger Lee Goodwin. Benbow encounters a sinister man called Popeye, an associate of Goodwin, who brings him to the decrepit mansion where he meets Goodwin and the strange people who live there with him. Later that night, Benbow catches a ride from Goodwin's place into Jefferson. He argues with his sister and Miss Jenny about leaving his wife, and meets Gowan Stevens, a local bachelor who recently has been courting Narcissa. That night, Benbow moves back into his parents' house, which has been sitting vacant for years. After meeting Benbow, Gowan leaves to go to a dance in Oxford that same night. Gowan has returned to Jefferson after graduating from the University of Virginia, where he "learned to drink like a gentleman." He is from a wealthy family and prides himself on having adopted the worldview of the Virginia aristocracy. His date that night is Temple Drake, a student at the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss"), who has a reputation of being a