A small boy in a coat and tie speaks French, and his teenage self in a torn T-shirt wraps a belt around his arm, singing in a high, groping, passionate tenor. A woman walks with the ghosts of her dead brother. Blues chords swell.

On the east Virginia shore, Miss Look-and-Go-Find comes to a memorial service. Her brother has died young — her older brother, a genius with music and languages, who has rarely come home for years, since he became a heroin addict. With a new vigor, she wants to know what happened to him.

Following an older woman who can send her alto voice across an auditorium even at a whisper, Miss Look recalls her childhood. You thought his friends led him wrong, says her guide, but look again and ask what a young man with a strong mind does with his intelligence, w...

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