I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

The ghost of Hank Williams haunts the hero of a Grammy winner’s first novel
Mix one part Raymond Chandler with two parts Charles Bukowski and you’d wind up with something like Steve Earle’s I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive. Doc Ebersole is a down-and-out physician with a morphine habit who’s eking out a pathetic existence in San Antonio’s skid row. The year is 1963, and the disgraced doctor is reduced — has reduced himself — to patching gunshot wounds, repairing broken ribs, and performing abortions for poor souls even worse off than he.

Into this grim picture enter two figures: one is the ghost of Hank Williams, who visits Doc to float eerily and accuse him of administering the shot of morphine that did Williams in. (“There are some things about being haunted that Doc will never get used to.”) The other is a more beatific character. Eighteen year-old Graciela speaks little English when she comes to Doc in dire straits. After performing the necessary procedure, Ebersole takes a liking to the young woman, and she returns the sentiment. Beautiful Graciela — “finely chiseled features more Indian than mestiza, glossy black hair contrasting against her bare shoulders” — turns out to have powers of her own, including the ability to heal everyone who crosses her path. The ghost of Hank Williams, however, is not pleased to cede his share of Doc’s attention, and it is this uncommon conflict that brings a listener into Earle’s gritty, boozy, sin-riddled world. The author is a Grammy-winning performer whom viewers might recognize from roles in The Wire and Treme. The audio version of his book is read, most fittingly, by Earle himself.