Evie Solo is a young university student, resettling in the United States after a nomadic life with her father, a Foreign Service officer discharged under circumstances Evie has never understood.

Lost in a world with a father who's changed in deeply troubling ways, she seeks answers in an introductory philosophy class, where she encounters a question she sees as a pointless game, but is unable to dismiss: What would she pay to know her future?

Trying to focus on more realistic concerns, Evie takes on a special study of human poverty and inequality, though the question about predicting...