StevenssInRQ

This sequel of sorts to Sanctuary stages a confrontation between three members of the Stevens family: Gavin, Gowan, his wife - the former Temple Drake, whom Gowan has married in an attempt to atone for his failures in the earlier novel. There is a new crime - the very youngest member of the family, an infant daughter, has been murdered by the black maid, Nancy, in a tragically benighted attempt to keep the rest of the family together - but Faulkner's focus is on the way "Uncle Gavin," playing the part of detective-turned-unofficial-prosecutor, forces his nephew Gowan and niece by marriage to testify to the truth about themselves. In this one instance, the extended Stevens family here takes center stage in the drama. And by extension, Faulkner acknowledges the intertextual and interfamilial relationships between Stevenses and Benbows. As he keeps pushing Temple toward a confession, Gavin himself can be seen as compensating for Horace Benbow's failure in Sanctuary to cross-examine Temple when she was literally in the witness box. Some of the words Horace spoke in Sanctuary are actually now given to Gavin.