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I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive

3.66 ( 3,275 Ratings by Goodreads)
I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive

I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive

(Author)
3.66 (3,275 Ratings by Goodreads)
paperback
Published: 7 July, 2011
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I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive
I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive
Steve Earle
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Description

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams - not just in the figurative sense, not just because Doc was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because Doc is rumoured to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him. In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc is himself wracked by addiction. Having lost his licence to practise 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 neighbourhood 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 and a marvellous novel in its own right, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.
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Type Book
ISBN13 9781846555084
ISBN10 1846555086
Number Of Pages 256
Item Weight 298 g
Product Dimensions 134 x 20 x 214 mm
Publisher / Reseller Harvill Secker
Format paperback
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Media Reviews

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 With this book Earle seems to have provided as good an explanation as any for the morbid appeal of country music. To devotees such as Doc, (Hank) Williams's songs are a kind of cosmic sponge, capable of absorbing any amount of human misery before pouring it all back in that heartrending wail that got down in your bones like a cold wet day . And though the novel comes no closer to establishing the facts of Hank Williams's death, it certainly reveals a good deal of truth behind it -- Alfred Hickling Guardian

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Author's Bio

STEVE EARLE is a singer-songwriter, actor, activist, and the author of the story collection Doghouse Roses. He has released more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums, including the Grammy winners The Revolution Starts Now, Washington Square Serenade and Townes. He has appeared on film and television, with celebrated roles in The Wire and Treme. Frequently interviewed and profiled in the press, he often tours with his wife, singer-songwriter Allison Moorer.

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