Told in let­ters, jour­nal entries, and inter­view tran­scripts, The Mir­a­cle Let­ters of T. Rim­berg chron­i­cles the (sup­pos­ed­ly) last year in the life of ​“a skit­tish part-Jew who grew up under­achiev­ing in a small Mid­west­ern town.” After mess­ing up in near­ly every aspect of his life, T. Rim­berg is plan­ning to kill him­self. He’s not sure exact­ly how, but in prepa­ra­tion and des­per­a­tion, he writes let­ters to all the peo­ple in his life: his broth­er, his young chil­dren, high school teach­ers, Julia Child.… Then a let­ter comes addressed to T.; his estranged father has died and left him a large inher­i­tance. T. begins a jour­ney from Min­neapo­lis, to Antwerp to War­saw. He even­tu­al­ly ends up in Green Bay, Wis­con­sin. Along the way he dis­cov­ers a side of his father he nev­er knew. Though Herbach’s debut nov­el ven­tures into clichéd plot ter­ri­to­ry and would not be cat­e­go­rized as Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture, The Mir­a­cle Let­ters’ true strength lies in the voice of its not-always-lov­able, imper­fect narrator.