I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

Steve Earle

ISBN 10: 0618820965 / ISBN 13: 9780618820962

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0618820965I4N00

Synopsis:

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just in the figurative sense, not just because he was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked by addiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, his morphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe, for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doing well. 

A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is also a marvelous novel in its own right, a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

From the Back Cover:

Praise for I'LL NEVER GET OUT OF THIS WORLD ALIVE

"Steve Earle brings to his prose the same authenticity, poetic spirit, and cinematic energy he projects in his music. I ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is like a dream you can t shake, offering beauty and remorse, redemption in spades." Patti Smith

". . . a doctor, a Mexican girl, an Irish priest, the ghost of Hank Williams, and JFK the day before he dies. This subtle and dramatic book is the work of a brilliant songwriter who has moved from song to orchestral ballad with astonishing ease." Michael Ondaatje

"A rich, raw mix of American myth and hard social reality, of faith and doubt, always firmly rooted in a strong sense of character." Charles Frazier

"Steve Earle writes like a shimmering neon angel." Kinky Friedman

"Earle has created a potent blend of realism and mysticism. Musician, actor, and now novelist is there another artist in America with such wide-ranging talent?" Ron Rash

"The characters are unforgettable and the plot moves like a fast train. A fantastic mixture of hard reality and dark imagination." Thomas Cobb

"A haunting and haunted bookend to Irving s Cider House Rules. Gritty and transcendent, Earle has successfully created his own potion of Texas, twang, and dope-tinged magic realism." Alice Randall

Bibliographic Details

Title: I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: 2011
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket