“Blood Rust Chains” is the second novel by Marco Etheridge. This story began with a strange dream, a nagging character, and a foolish entry into the Nano-Write Challenge. The Challenge is to write a minimum of a fifty-thousand word novel in thirty days. November, 2016, became a crazy month, a marathon of writing. From it was born the first draft of this novel. Of course, there were rewrites, being beaten up by the Beta-Reader Dark Army, and the continuous rounds of proofing. After all of that, the little bloody monster born of a frantic month is loosed on the world. Here is some advance praise for “Blood Rust Chains”: Blood Rust Chains by Marco Etheridge. Review by Elena Deem, PhD Blood Rust Chains, Etheridge’s second book, is an inconspicuously powerful account of a struggle for inner peace in situations of conflict and loss of control. As its main character, Quinn, sweeps through the streets of Portland and faces his nemesis, the novella unfolds to deliver a strong, yet subtly forged message of redemption through self-reflection and honest ownership of one’s mistakes. Revenge and redemption, inherent particularly to popular US fiction, are here reworked with a near Zen-Buddhist take that lifts the narrative out of recognizable genres, and deconstructs the possibility of a predictable ending. This makes for an exciting read that is simultaneously soothing and jagging as the author explores a range of popular genres (pop heroic fiction, detective story, love story), but skillfully pulls the rug from under the reader at the very moment she expects a familiar denouement. Etheridge is a keen observer of all levels of social interactions, and a skilled writer who knows how to seamlessly join form with content to orchestrate authentic experience that also somehow stretches the boundaries of a relevant genre. He smoothly moves from one scene of social interaction to another, and from one genre to the next, citing historical accounts as well as WhatsApp messages. The story is brought to socially diverse yet quotidian contexts, digging deep into situations whose significance is never entirely predictable, and which force Quinn to see his own predisposition to conflict and violence. At first, Quinn seems like an ordinary, freelance journalist. But Quinn has something street-and-working-class about him, and shows undue restraint when forced into a conflict. Yet, after his journalistic interest in the recent “genealogy craze” brings about an unexpected confrontation with the violent past of his own family, Quinn responds, which unleashes the ghosts from his own past. Killing and death loom close once Quinn allows the Wild West family stories get under his skin, and he starts musing over the apparent differences between murder committed in revenge and in self-defense. In spite of himself, Quinn reacts to his belligerent neighbor, whose mission in life it is to provoke conflict. When the neighbor dies under suspicious circumstances, Quinn becomes the main suspect. Confrontation and conflict, both literal and metaphoric, and their ethical ramifications, forge the central stage for the story. Unwillingly, Quinn is thrown into the ring to fight for his dignity and serenity through a series of precarious rounds of confrontation with different characters (the neighbor, police detectives, a mobster), that gradually increase in intensity. As in all good stories, the fight ultimately proves to be a matter of the character’s mind, rather than an act of physical violence unleashed onto the other (though Quinn does have a slip in the end); of taming the beast within with principle, courage, self-reflection, and guidance. Blood Rust Chains foregrounds the premise that if there is anything like control over external situations, it is a matter of trained self-reflection; change can only happen from within. When Quinn loses his self-reflective defenses and slips, he immediately finds himself in a situation of immanent danger. This, of course, is a storyline well-known from the AA, and indeed, it turns out that Quinn is in a long-term recovery. Underpinning Quinn’s current situation is therefore another narrative that seems simpler and more solid: that of working the program. Etheridge’s writing is inherently clear-eyed; at times caustic and at others compassionate, he nevertheless presents a structure that ultimately disallows Quinn to be anything but brutally honest with himself. Interestingly, this narrative setup causes that nearly all the characters in the novella, and Quinn’s interactions with them, serve as what might be called “Quinn’s truth posts.” Forefronted by Quinn’s partner—a lawyer whose ability to thoroughly examine and confront any gray areas in Quinn’ s honesty department is much needed—they help Quinn navigate and grow through his terrifying situation. In the course, Quinn is forced to answer key questions that address the mechanisms of his perception of reality, and acknowledge his own responsibility to constantly check the truth of his states of being. After all, reality in the novella may be just that: whereas the exterior circumstances are beyond Quinn’s control, Quinn’s internal setup can be known—and so modified—by his acute awareness of his motives and triggers. This, in turn, may affect Quinn’s responses; a change in the usual behavioral pattern might prompt a minuscule shift in the direction of the unfolding events, which may be enough for Quinn to survive. Blood Rust Chains is truly a story of a personal quest for redemption and inner peace, for removing what might be the “chains” of misperception and dishonesty that tie Quinn to his past. As the process concludes, Quinn feels that while this freedom might be temporary, the mechanisms of self-confrontation he has leant are not. He is “ready for what comes. And if he felt those chains again, the chains of fear and anger, he would be ready for them as well.” Elena Deem has earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington in 2008. She works as a freelance literary and art critic.