Blood Tie

Ceramos, on the Turkish coast, lies like theater around its ancient harbor. It has been a Greek, a Persian, a Roman, a Christian, a Turkish city. Now western ideas are torturing Ceramos into the modern world, in the form of expatriate Americans and Europeans who seek to steal from the city what they cannot find in themselves. Among the invaders are middle-aged Ariadne, recently divorced and intensely unhappy, Trader, an ex-accountant, and Miranda, his wife, desperate for any kind of experience. There are Lisa, the petulant heiress whose casual seduction may bring about the final ruin of this Aegean paradise, and Basil, who moves on without a backward glance at the destruction he has caused.

At first the many characters have little in common besides the fact that they have been thrown together as strangers, but, like waves circling from pebbles, their motives and desires cross and blend in an eerie, sometimes is geometry of misunderstanding. The book begins with accidental death and ends with deliberate murder, but it has more to talk about than destruction: new life grows out of death and change, and what endures are the blood ties.

Mary Lee Settle's versatility conveys the restlessness and ennui of the foreigners as successfully as the humanity and basically oriental attitude of the native Turks. To funny and sad examples of cultures clashing, she adds vivid scenes of archaeological digs, underwater diving, a children's festival. Further, her description of Timur, fugitive lost in a cave is as terrifying as anything since Mark Twain put Tom Sawyer in the same predicament.