I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive
  • Published: 3 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099554479
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $45.00

I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive

Formats & editions
EBook
6 Dec 2011
Paperback
3 Sep 2012
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

From celebrated musician Steve Earle comes a novel imagining the life, addiction, and redemption of Doc Ebersole as he is haunted by his former patient, Hank Williams.

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams. Literally.

In 1963, ten years after giving Hank the overdose that killed him, Doc is wracked by addiction. Having lost his licence to practise medicine, 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. 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.

I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is a poetic ghost story, as well as a ballad of regret and redemption, and miracles.
  • Published: 3 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099554479
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

About the author

Steve Earle

Steve Earle is a singer-songwriter, actor, activist, and the author of the story collection Doghouse Roses (2002) and I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive (2011).

Steve Earle has released ten critically acclaimed albums since his 1986 debut Guitar Town made him an overnight star. A prolonged struggle with drug addiction resulted in a spell in jail in the early 1990s. Since his recovery, his comeback albums, beginning with the 1995 Grammy-nominated Train a Comin', have all been critical and commercial successes. His latest album is Transcendental Blues. Earle also works on behalf of a number of political and social causes which have been the subjects of his songs for years. He serves as a board member of an organisation that seeks to abolish the death penalty and is also active in anti-landmine and welfare rights movements.

His fiction has been described by Patti Smith as “like a dream you can't shake, offering beauty and remorse, and redemption in spades.”

portrait photo of Steve Earle

Also by Steve Earle

Doghouse Roses
See all

Praise for I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive

Earle's language is vividly poetic, his humour is never clunky and he always convinces, whether working on a cinematic or intimate scale

Sharon O'Connell, Time Out

A witty, heartfelt story of hope, forgiveness and redemption

Booklist

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 seems to have little trouble expanding his range from a three-minute song to a 300-page narrative... 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

The former junkie and 'hardcore troubadour' has fought his demons and found God. Now he wants to show us how it's done

The Times

Snapshots of brilliance

Metro
penguin pop image
penguin pop image