Adam Wiebe is a Canadian Mennonite who is obsessed with the history of his people and his family. When his marriage unravels, Adam travels the world seeking out long-lost uncles and uncovering the murky truths behind his family's past, going back to the 16th century in the Netherlands. What follows is a series of first-person testimonies by historical and fictional Wiebes, from the brilliant engineer Wybe Adams van Harlingen (who in the throes of the Reformation fortified Danzig to the point of impenetrability and, in the process, invented the cable car) to martyrs, painters, freethinkers, and the victims of warfare and tyranny.