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.

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.

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.

His date that night is Temple Drake, a student at the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss"), who has a reputation of being a "fast girl."

While they are out, Gowan and Temple make plans to meet the next morning to travel with her classmates to Starkville for a baseball game.

But, after taking Temple home after the dance, Gowan learns from some locals where he can find moonshine and spends the night drinking heavily.

He speeds to the next town to intercept it, meeting Temple in Taylor, and persuading her to ride with him to Starkville—a violation of the university's rules for young women.

All the men continue to drink; Gowan and Van, a member of Goodwin's bootlegging crew, argue and provoke each other.

She is condescending, which angers Popeye, and tries to hold court in the room where the men are drinking despite Ruby's advice that she stay away from them.

Benbow tries to let Ruby and her sickly infant child stay with him in the house in Jefferson, but Narcissa, as half-owner, refuses because of the Goodwin family's reputation.

On the train back to Jefferson, he runs into an unctuous state senator named Clarence Snopes, who says that the newspaper is claiming that Temple has been "sent up north" by her father.

In reality, Temple is living in a room in a Memphis bawdy house owned by Miss Reba, an asthmatic, widowed madam, who thinks highly of Popeye and is happy that he's finally chosen a paramour.

He takes Temple to a roadhouse called The Grotto, intending to settle whether she will permanently stay with Popeye or Red.

At the club, Temple drinks heavily and tries to have furtive sex with Red in a back room, but he spurns her advances for the moment.

Narcissa visits the District Attorney and reveals she wants Benbow to lose the case as soon as possible, so that he will cease his involvement with the Goodwins.

After writing to his wife to ask for a divorce, Benbow tries to get back in touch with Temple through Miss Reba, who tells him that both she and Popeye are gone.

Temple and her father make a final appearance in the Jardin du Luxembourg, having found sanctuary in Paris.

[7] Gene D. Phillips of Loyola University of Chicago wrote that because audiences were preoccupied with lurid scenes instead of its moral philosophy, the book was a "best seller for all of the wrong reasons".

Two years later, Faulkner, surprised, received the galley copies and promptly decided to rewrite the manuscript as he was not satisfied with it.

[16] In 1958, a new edition was published by Random House with the co-operation of Faulkner, the entire text was reset and errors corrected.

André Malraux characterized it as, in the words of E. Pauline Degenfelder of Worcester Public Schools, "a detective story with overtones of Greek tragedy".

[18] Doreen Fowler, author of "Reading for the "Other Side": Beloved and Requiem for a Nun," wrote that "it could be argued that the title" refers to the main character's sexual organs, which are attacked by Popeye.

[19] In 1933, Sanctuary was adapted into the Pre-Code film The Story of Temple Drake starring Miriam Hopkins, with the rapist character "Popeye" renamed "Trigger" for copyright reasons.

[20] The novel was later a co-source, with its sequel Requiem for a Nun (1951), for the 1961 film Sanctuary, starring Lee Remick as Temple and Yves Montand as her rapist, now renamed "Candy Man".

"[7] Phillips wrote that "It is a matter of record that James Hadley Chase's lurid novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish was heavily indebted to Sanctuary for its plot line.

"[23] According to Phillips, that means both film adaptations, No Orchids for Miss Blandish and The Grissom Gang, received inspiration from Sanctuary.