Sanctuary

“A haunting study of evil triumphant” from one of great twentieth-century American writers, the Noble Prize–winning author of The Sound and the Fury (The New York Times).

This controversial 1931 novel shocked readers and critics with its portrayal of human depravity and legal corruption in Prohibition Era Mississippi. It tells the story of idealistic lawyer Horace Benbow, who—while taking a break from his failing marriage—stumbles across a ruined plantation house, the home of bootlegger Lee Goodwin. But a night of drinking with Goodwin, the mother of his child, and his shady associates won’t be Benbow’s last encounter with the moonshiners . . .

When Goodwin is accused of murder, Benbow takes his case—an uphill battle since Goodwin refuses to snitch on the real killer. But what is revealed to Benbow is a chaotic night of unspeakable horror beginning with the arrival of a college girl, taken to the plantation by her drunken date. Her presence heats up an already simmering brew of hostility and lust. The killing that ensues is just the beginning of a twisted Southern gothic tale of tainted innocence, moral failure, and justice denied. 

“Thick with menace, desire, compulsion and despair.” —Los Angeles Times

“Not a book for the fainthearted.” —The Sunday Times