Preparing to deliver her Last Day speech to celebrate her new adulthood in a world where every word and gesture is copyrighted, patented or trademarked, a 15-year-old girl elects to remain silent rather than pay to speak, a decision that threatens to unravel the fabric of society.

"When Alizée Benoit, a young American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940, no one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her arts patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends and fellow WPA painters, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece,...