Steve Earle: I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive (2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company)
256 pages
English language
Published Dec. 15, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
It's 1963 and in a rented room, in the red-light district of San Antonio, Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams. Doc, rumoured to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him, supports his own morphine habit. Having lost his licence to practise medicine, he performs abortions and patches up the odd knife or gunshot wound. Then, when he meets Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better - except Hank's angry ghost ...
I listened to the audiobook and loved the feel of the narrative until it introduced a trans character. Unlike the rest of the book, wherein almost every down-and-out person was treated with compassion, there was none in evidence for her. I couldn’t get past that.
