Reviewers admired the convincing way Settle portrayed Turkish characters and society in Blood Tie, which is set mostly in and around Ceramos, a fictional small town on the southwest coast of Turkey. Settle lived in the area for a couple of years, but in addition she found plenty of parallels in Turkish society to Appalachian coal towns and even to the seventeenth-century British society in Prisons (1973), which she had just finished writing before Blood Tie. The main social concern in Blood Tie, as elsewhere in Settle's work, is the domination of society by bosses, whether they are called landowners, mine operators, padrones, or aghas (as in Turkey), and the consequent stifling of democracy.

Ceramos is dominated by Duriist Osman, the old agha, and his corrupt son Huseyin. They are the local landowning aristocracy, but here, as in Settle's other books, the aristocrats have grimy and disreputable...