The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Feldman, Deborah. Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012.

Deborah Feldman's memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, is written from Deborah's first person point of view, and told in the present tense.

After Deborah's mother flees the Hasidic community under mysterious pretenses, her family declares her father unfit to raise her. Initially, Deborah moves in with her aunt, Chaya. Chaya's coldness and cruelty, lead Deborah to move in with her father's parents, who she calls Bubby and Zeidy. Though Bubby and Zeidy are not unkind to Deborah, she feels a constant sense of detachment and loneliness. She does not know anyone else who does not live with their parents. Her family's constant need to make disparaging comments about her parents' mental instability, causes Deborah to live in shame of her parental roots, and fear of becoming just like them. She tries her hardest to be a good Jewish girl, to satisfy the hopes and expectations of her grandparents.

However, Deborah cannot help speaking out, breaking rules, and staging small pranks and acts of rebellion. She acts out in school, speaks her mind, and even begins secretly checking out forbidden English books from the library. She spends much of her time alone in her room, reading these hidden novels. For once she feels a sense of belonging, as if the authors see and know her. She hopes desperately to be delivered from her entrapping circumstances by some magical force.

Though her secret independent reading grants Deborah some sense of escape from her rigid and restrictive life, she continues to feel isolated and restless. She feels as if she has a giant empty hole inside her, and attempts to fill it with more books, and with food. Later she will understand this emptiness was a symptom of her deeper longings for a life that she was not allowed to live, an identity and voice she was neither allowed to acknowledge or to use.

As Deborah nears the end of her high school education, she begins applying herself to her studies anew. She is especially eager to please her English teacher. However, like her instructor, Deborah knows her academic achievements will never amount to anything. Hasidic girls graduate after only three years of high school, their diplomas unrecognized by anyone outside their community. They are expected to find husbands, marry, and begin having children immediately after graduation. For a few months before the matchmaker begins making arrangements, Deborah finds joy and a new sense of freedom in her teaching job at the younger school. She makes friends with another like-minded teacher, Mindy, and the two sneak around and explore the city together. This period swiftly ends, when the matchmaker and Deborah's family secure her a husband, Eli.

After their first meeting, Deborah believes that Eli sees her and understands her. In the weeks leading to the wedding, she convinces herself that she and Eli will have a freer marriage and a happy life. She becomes increasingly anxious about her role as a wife, however, when she begins taking marriage classes. She learns for the first time about the Hasidic legal aspects of marriage and her expectations as a woman. She is also shocked to learn about sex and her female anatomy. She feels ashamed of and confused by her body. She cannot reconcile her former belief that she was just a vessel for the Holy Spirit, and this new revelation that she is meant for sex and reproduction alone.

Once she and Eli are married, Deborah's anxiety becomes even more overwhelming. Her body actively rejects sex, and the more guilty and ashamed she feels, the more sick she becomes. After visiting countless doctors, and suffering an impossible amount of shame at the hands of her community and family, Deborah and Eli finally consummate their marriage. Deborah discovers she is pregnant shortly thereafter. Tired and sick of her Williamsburg life, Deborah convinces Eli to move to Airmont, New York before the baby's birth. In Airmont, Deborah feels a new sense of freedom. This feeling does not last, however. After having the baby, Yitzy, Deborah feels stifled yet again. She cannot adjust to her role as a mother, and cannot seem to love her own child.

In order to escape her life and frustrations, Deborah applies for and is accepted into Sarah Lawrence College. She begins secretly pursuing studies in literature and poetry. At Sarah Lawrence College, a new world opens for Deborah. Her instructors and classmates not only value and affirm her intellect, but see and understand Deborah's personhood as well. They grant her a new sense of community, and make room for her to explore a world she desperately desires to call her own. With the help and encouragement of her new friend, Polly, Deborah eventually decides to leave her Hasidic life. After a severe car accident, she tells Eli she does not want to see him again. They divorce, she takes Yitzy, and begins a new life.

Though relieved by her freedom, Deborah struggles to reconcile her past and present lives. She uses writing and motherhood to gradually balance herself, and make meaning out of her newfound independence.