Blood Tie Summary
Mary Lee Settle

Everything you need to understand or teach Blood Tie by Mary Lee Settle.

  • Blood Tie Summary & Study Guide

Blood Tie Summary

The title Blood Tie suggests something high-minded like brotherhood, the recognition of common humanity among diverse peoples, or the forming of close relationships. There are examples of all these in Blood Tie, but the title also evokes a more sinister theme — the complicity of bloodshed. In the three instances of death in the novel, numerous people are implicated as partially responsible, some unwittingly or ignorantly. The first instance involves only Turks: One of Huseyin's overloaded passenger boats, habitually ignored by the authorities, swamps and sends several young people to their doom, including Huseyin's fiancee, daughter of a rich Istanbul agha. In the second instance, an American woman who sleeps around with the young Turkish men is caught in the act by her husband, who commits suicide by scuba diving deep into the ocean and then shooting to the surface like a human missile. In the third instance...

(read more from the Short Guide)

Study Pack