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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Earle, S. 2011 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Steve Earle is a singer-songwriter who has released ten critically acclaimed albums since his 1986 debut album, "Guitar Town", burst onto the Nashville scene & made him a star overnight. A prolonged struggle with drug addiction resulted in jail time in the early 1990s, but Earle's recovery & comeback albums, beginning with the 1995 Grammy-nominated "Train A Comin'," have all been critical & commercial successes. His latest album is "Transcendental Blues". Earle also works on behalf of a number of political causes, which have been the subjects of his songs for decades. In the struggle to end the death penalty, he serves as a board member of the Journey of Hope & is affiliated with both Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP) & the Abolitionist Action Committee. He is also a supporter of the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World & the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. He has been the subject of recent profiles in "Esquire" & "Men's Journal" & has appeared on "Nightline" & "CBS Sunday Morning". He is a frequent guest on David Letterman's & Jay Leno's shows.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this spruce debut novel (nine years after his short story collection, Doghouse Roses), hard-core troubadour Earle ponders miracles, morphine, and mortality in 1963 San Antonio, Tex., where aging junkie Doc Ebersole performs backroom abortions to support his habit. Ten years before, the doctor was riding shotgun while his patient, fishing buddy, and fellow addict Hank Williams coughed his last in the Cadillac's backseat. Ever since, Hank has haunted Doc, who now "saw no need to squander more than a single syllable on a miserable life such as his own." Hank's ghost berates Doc for taking in one of Doc's "in trouble" Mexican girls, Graciela, who has breathed life not only into the lonesome codger, but into scores of San Antonio desperados who slink through their boarding-house clinic. Word is spreading that Graciela heals and redeems, and that even Doc might kick his habit if he doesn't kick the bucket first. 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. It won't hurt that Earle's next album comes out around the same time and shares the title. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A thematically ambitious debut novel that draws from the writer's experience yet isn't simply a memoir in the guise of fiction.Since "write what you know" is the axiom of most fledgling authors, it's no surprise that the first novel by the acclaimed singer-songwriter who previously published a collection of short stories (Doghouse Roses, 2001) should be steeped in the cultures of San Antonio (his hometown), country music (his early musical focus) and drug addiction (which almost killed him). Yet this richly imagined novel not only takes its title from a Hank Williams classic, it audaciously employs Hank's ghost as a combination of morphine demon and guardian angel, whose presence initially can only be witnessed by Doc, the novelist's protagonist. Ten years earlier, Doc was Hank's companion and fishing buddy, one of the last to see the country singer alive, and perhaps the cause of his death. By the time of this novel, set in 1963, Doc has lost his license, his home and any reason to live beyond his daily fix. He supports himself by performing cheap abortions, which is how he meets the teenage Mexican immigrant who will prove a miracle worker not only in Doc's life but throughout the story. Graciela (who refuses to be called "Grace," though that's what she embodies) stays with Doc after he performs her abortion, helping assist him in a procedure that her religion considers a mortal sin, and somehow develops a miraculous healing power that not only helps Doc kick his addiction but provides salvation to so many of the San Antonio neighborhood's other hookers and junkies. "There was something that was at once humbling and empowering about her very presence in his life," Earle writes. With a plot that encompasses the Kennedy assassination along with the life and death of Hank Williams, and which draws a thematic line between spirituality and the religion which purports to embody it, the novel occasionally stumbles in its ambition but builds to a transcendent climax.Already well-respected for both his music and his acting, Earle can now add novelist to an impressive rsum.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Iconic country-rocker Earle's imaginative first novel follows the troubled life of Doc Ebersole, who may have supplied the shot of morphine that killed country legend Hank Williams. It's 1963, a decade after Hank's death, and Doc, struggling with his own addiction, has lost his medical license and settled in San Antonio's red light district. Hank's forlorn ghost visits him regularly, reminding him of their days together on the road, while Doc performs illegal abortions and patches up knife and bullet wounds to sustain his habit. One day Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, shows up in need of his assistance. With her charm and grace, and the miracles she leaves in her wake, Graciela brings warmth to a grim community. Even Doc finds himself changing for the good. The only one unhappy about Graciela's influence is Hank, lonesome again and looking for trouble. Capturing the hype and unease of the Kennedy era and touching on hot-button issues, Earle draws on the rough-and-tumble tenderness in his music to create a witty, heartfelt story of hope, forgiveness, and redemption.--Fullmer, Jonatha. Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Fans of Texas singer/songwriter Earle know that he can tell a story in a three-minute song, but with his debut novel (after the story collection Doghouse Roses), he proves that he can successfully sustain plot and character through a full-length work. Doc has lost his license to practice medicine but still tends to the whores, victims and/or perpetrators of street crime, and occasional unwanted pregnancy in San Antonio's South Presa corridor. Doc is haunted by the ghost of Hank Williams (he might have had a hand in Hank's journey to the grave), and most of the proceeds from his illicit medical practice go to support his own heroin habit. Then a Mexican girl seeking to terminate a pregnancy is brought to his room. Because Graciela bleeds profusely after the procedure, Doc moves her into his room. Soon she insinuates herself into his life and his medical practice, and Doc is feeling the call of the needle much less frequently. While Graciela herself is slow to heal, the patients she touches seem to mend as if by miracle, eventually bringing Doc and the other residents at the boardinghouse unwanted attention from both the church and the law. VERDICT At once gritty and tender, this is an arresting story of pulling oneself back from the precipice and finding the beauty in the darkest of corners. Fans will seek it out, but readers don't have to be familiar with Earle's musical career to fall under its spell. [See Prepub Alert, 1/15/11.]-Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.