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Steve Earle?s heartbreaking debut novel features a morphine addict who performs illegal abortions, a young Mexican girl with mysterious healing powers, the ghost of Hank Williams, and a host of other more or less charismatic misfits. Set in San Antonio around the time of JFK?s assassination, and told with an equal mix of sympathy and violent detail, the story maintains a delicate balance of many such would-be opposing forces: Catholicism and ?hoodoo,? addiction and redemption, brutal reality and magical realism.
A first novel this compelling from any author would be cause for celebration, but Earle is also a musician (the GRAMMY?-winning albums?Washington Square Serenade and?Townes), actor (The Wire), and activist, and in this context the book is even more of a watershed accomplishment.?I?ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is decidedly not for the faint of art, but adventuresome fiction readers will find much to love in its shocking, tender depths. ?Jason Kirk, Amazon.Com Review
Editorial Reviews
?Earle (a hell of a songwriter himself) has written?a deft, big-spirited novel about sin, faith, redemption, and the family of man.? ?Entertainment Weekly
?Earle draws on the rough-and-tumble tenderness in his music to create?a witty, heartfelt story of hope, forgiveness, and redemption.? ?Booklist
?In this spruce debut novel?hard-core troubadour Earle ponders miracles, morphine and mortality in 1963 San Antonio? With its Charles Portis vibe and the author?s immense cred as a musician and actor, this should have no problem finding the wide audience it deserves.? ?Publishers Weekly
?A thematically ambitious debut novel that draws from the writer?s experience, yet isn?t simply a memoir in the guise of fiction?richly imagined?? ?Kirkus Reviews, starred
?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
Review
Steve Earle?s first novel (his first book was the collection of short stories?Doghouse Roses: Stories) is a well-written story that is unmistakably a Steve Earle product. Framed in the weeks before and the months after JFK?s assassination (and in reality written in a time when Earle was struggling to come to terms with his father?s death and needed an outlet, of which the album?I?ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is also a product), ?I?ll Never Get Out of This World Alive? tells the fictional story of Doc Ebersole, a fallen-from-grace MD who now practices medicine (mostly abortions) out of a boarding house in the South Presa Strip of San Antonio and struggles with a twice-daily morphine habit. As Doc was allegedly the last to see Hank Williams alive ten years earlier, Hank?s ghost has the curious and often unhealthy (for Doc) habit of haunting Doc, mainly when he?s high but also just when Hank is lonely, continuously pushing Doc to keep pushing the drug into his veins. One day, however, a young Mexican girl named Graciela is brought to Doc in need of an abortion. The two grow fond of each other during and after her recovery and it soon becomes apparent that all is not what it seems with Graciela as strange miracles begin happening on the South Presa Strip, attracting the attention not only of the local lost souls, but also of the local priest Father Killen. The end result is an explosive climax befitting all the characters involved, from Father Killen to Doc?s dealer and somewhat friend Manny to Doc himself and to Graciela. Even to Hank.
The novel itself is an easy read. At around 250 pages, it is not too long, and the language is written in Earle?s typical ?everyman? diction that he uses in his lyrics and now in his books. The characters are fairly well-written, some better than others (Father Killen seems a little unbelievable at times, even with the efforts to give him a background), but the real meat of the writing is Doc?s addiction, the realism of which is fueled by the knowledge that Earle had his own much-publicized demons in his younger days. It is hard to read the (sometimes unsettling) descriptions of Doc?s drug trips and not feel that Earle has somehow put some of his own experience into the writing. Earle?s fictionalized descriptions of Hank Williams? ghost also weave well into the story, as Doc struggles to balance his obligations to those around him with the ghost that haunts him. The story itself seems familiar and like one that we?ve all heard before, as a sort of twist on the good vs. evil motif. At times it feels a little predictable, but Earle tries to stay one step ahead of the reader to keep you guessing, his skills as a songwriter aiding in his ability to tell a good story. Deftly walking a line between matters of good and evil, addiction, morality, and religion, Steve Earle?s ?I?ll Never Get Out of This World Alive? comes recommended not only to his fans, but also to those who love a good story. ? Ryan Winkleman, Amazon.Com Customer Review
A tale of sin, grace, and redemption from singer Earle
The Boston Globe Book Review ? May 24, 2011 (Excerpt)
Steve Earle?s debut novel, ?I?ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,?? could become a talking point for critics of graduate programs in creative writing. Earle, one of our better singer-songwriters, never bothered to finish high school. But he put out a surprisingly impressive collection of short fiction, ?Doghouse Roses,?? a decade ago, and has now successfully moved his songwriter?s gift for storytelling onto a still larger canvas.
The novel takes its title, as does a CD of new songs Earle released in last month, from the final single released in the short life of country great Hank Williams. The notes Earle included with the CD suggest he has been pondering mortality lately, as might be expected of a man who has lost his father and gained a newborn son in the past few years. Such thoughts also permeate his novel, which at one level is an allegorical tale of sin, grace, and redemption.
The book opens in late 1963, on a rough side of Earle?s native San Antonio. Its three principal characters? names contain nods to their roles in the allegory: Doc Ebersole, a morphine-addicted abortionist literally haunted by Williams for having provided the shot that killed him 10 years earlier; Graciela, a spiritually attuned young Mexican immigrant whose punk boyfriend brings her pregnant to Doc for treatment and abandons her; and Manny, a good-hearted giant of a pusher. The other lowlifes populating the novel as minor characters have good in them, too, and include a lesbian boardinghouse owner, a fat cop on the take, a tough, brainy barmaid, and a handful of hookers, one of them a cross-dressing former football player. [Read the full article...]
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Source: http://frogenyozurt.com/2011/05/ill-never-get-out-of-this-world-alive-a-novel-by-steve-earle/
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