"Think about it, boys," a man tells his twin sons. "People choose their lives; that's what I want you to remember. And what life will you choose for yourselves?"

At the beginning, Dan Chaon's new novel seems to hunt an answer that question. The characters, all desperately searching for their place in the world, range from narcissistic and obsessive to dull and naive.

Lucy is a recent high school graduate who leaves a small town in Ohio with her high-school teacher after her parents are killed. Only just above-average in intelligence, she's led to believe she's a stellar thinker by her witty, Maserati-driving, Yale-educated history teacher, George Orson.

Miles is searching for his long-gone twin brother, Hayden, a probable schizophrenic. Flashbacks to the twins' childhoods reveal that Miles feels inferior to Hayden, who antagonized him throughout childhood:

" 'You know, Miles,' he said. 'I really am a genius. I didn't want to hurt your feelings before, but let's face it. I'm a lot smarter than you, so you need to listen to me, okay?' "

College student Ryan, who was adopted, leaves a structured life in small-town Iowa to live with his biological father.

The novel begins with alternating chapters on the three stories:

Lucy and George take off to his parents' estate to collect a hefty chunk of cash; Miles remembers his childhood and searches for Hayden, who occasionally sends him letters revealing paranoia, delusion and a healthy respect for conspiracy theories; Ryan blows off a decent suburban life and a college education to go live with his deadbeat dad.

These stories, at first, present a lot of detail but not a lot of direction, but all the ink spent on backstory and character development prove to be worth it when the characters' lives intersect, and the novel turns from stories about people trying to find themselves to a page-turning mystery.