The Lives and Deaths of Jubrail Dabdoub employs a magical realist style of historical writing to tell the fantastical, yet real, story of the merchants of Bethlehem. Setting off on the backs of donkeys in the late 19th century, these young men and women traveled to every corner of the globe in search of new markets for the town's famous Holy Land devotional objects. Returning with tales of strange encounters and newfound economic opportunity, their journeys would leave deep imprints on local society, not just in Bethlehem, but across the wider region.

Presenting a rarely told version of Palestinian history on the eve of the country's encounter with Zionism, the book explores themes of exchange, mobility, faith and the supernatural in the era of 19th-century globalisation. Through this tale, an alternative image of Bethlehem emerges: not the object of western Christian fantasy, but a complex modern town that played a vital role in the formation of today's globally dispersed Arab diaspora.

At the center of these transformations lived Jubrail Dabdoub, a young man coming of age at the moment Bethlehemite families began their first forays abroad. The book tells the story of Jubrail's childhood in rural Bethlehem through his later voyages across Europe, East Asia, and the Americas, culiminating in a recorded miracle when he was brought back from the dead by a local nun. Through the story of Jubrail's life, Jacob Norris explores the porous lines between history and fiction, the normal and the paranormal, the everyday and the extraordinary.