Settle won the 1978 National Book Award for Fiction for her novel Blood Tie, set among expatriates in Turkey, marking the peak of critical recognition for her career.
On November 15, 1978, Mary Lee Settle received the National Book Award for Fiction for her novel Blood Tie (1977), a story set among a community of American and European expatriates in a small Turkish town. The novel drew on Settle's own years of residence in Turkey and explored themes of cultural collision, violence, and the outsider's uneasy relationship with a foreign land.
This award represented the pinnacle of mainstream literary recognition in Settle's career. Despite decades of critically acclaimed but commercially modest historical fiction — most notably her monumental Beulah Quintet — Settle had often felt overlooked by the American literary establishment. Notably, upon accepting the award, she used her platform to criticize the literary culture's neglect of serious historical fiction and to champion writers who worked outside fashionable trends, a moment that became famous in literary circles.
The National Book Award victory validated Settle's meticulous, research-driven approach to fiction and introduced her to a wider readership. It also cemented her reputation as a novelist capable of moving beyond her Appalachian home ground to render other cultures — in this case Turkey, where she had lived — with authenticity and depth. The win remains one of the signature achievements of her long literary career and is frequently cited in retrospectives of her work.