I’ve been a huge Steve Earle fan since he released the album Guitar Town in 1986. But that is the singer-songwriter Steve Earle, not the novelist Steve Earle, so no disclaimer should be needed.
Still, his prodigious songwriting talents made the crossover to long-form prose an intriguing and anticipated event. The characters that populate I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26) could have been pulled from his songs. He has a flair for creating memorable characters that are often on the wrong side of the tracks, but sustaining characters over the course of a novel is different from the glimpse offered in a three-minute song. Fortunately for Earle, that knack was not limited to songwriting.
This article appears in May 5-11, 2011.