The schools in the little town of Wonderville are different. They are taught by mechanical teachers that have been programmed to be perfect examples in every possible way. They speak correctly. They move correctly. They even carefully analyze each student for any sign of drug use, and they do that correctly too. They are however not very good at teaching. In fact, they are really really boring. One particularly bright student, Vayle, often finds his mind wandering in class. He is too smart for his own good. He knows more than most of the students in his class. One day, he starts asking questions, questions his school doesn't appreciate, questions like 'What is the Garden of Eden like?' and 'How do you tell the difference between the letter O and the number O?' and others. They are questions to which the school has no answer. Vayle gets in trouble. To teach Vayle a lesson, the Principal sends him on a tour of the upper classes, and Vayle learns the difference between being enrolled and being admitted. Those that are enrolled make perfect grades and eat warm roast beef for lunch. Those that attend spend their days running from mechanical truant officers armed with shock whips and detention slips. And the only difference between those two types of students is degrees of perfection. Vayle can't stop asking questions though. He can't turn off his brain like that. And he asks the one question every school administration hates. 'Why?' And then the real trouble begins.

Small churches in small towns generally do not like new preachers. The small church in Wonderville is no different, particularly when the new preacher has a protrusively large Adam's apple that distractingly bobs up and down during sermons. After many delicious poisoned pies and other attempts on their new preacher's life, the members of the little church are forced to take more drastic steps. They hire a killer deacon. Requiem is fairly well-educated and certainly well-protected. He is a preacher after all, and being so ordained, he is immune from things like unnatural deaths. The attempts do still hurt though. He understands what is going on. He understands that his church will not appreciate him until he proves himself. He just doesn't feel like the church is worth his one last miracle. When he became a preacher, he was given two miracles. He used one some time ago to make his shirt collars fit. Instead, Requiem enlists in help from the Broken Throated Advocators, a group of like-necked vigilantes who joined together to fight the persecution of men with extremely large Adam's Apples. Neither Requiem nor his little church will ever be the same. The Preacher is the first novella in the Angry Edenites series, which is about four people who go looking for the Garden of Eden. Luckily, they have a map.