Part 1 follows Ephraim Stoltzfus, an otherwise average Amish man who had been excommunicated and shunned for daring to suggest that some of the rules imposed by the community elders might be a tad unnecessary. His ultra-conservative Older Order Amish church subscribes to the same version of the Bible used by their Swiss/German forefathers, written in an antiquated form of Deutsch that most of them don't understand. After Ephraim and his equally inquisitive brother, Jesse, committed the cardinal sin of reading the Bible in English, they came to the realisation that many of their lifestyle codes hadn't been dictated by the good book at all.
