“The dirt on your hands is the only thing that’s real today, Lucian. Everything else—the stocks, the headlines, the screams of your mother—it’s just noise. And noise doesn’t feed hungry children.”

Sister Teresa didn’t look up from the vegetable patch she was tending. Her habit was stained with the red clay of the orphanage grounds, and her face, lined with decades of selfless service, remained as calm as a still lake. Behind her, the Saint Jude’s Home for Children echoed with the chaotic, joyful sounds of fifty orphans who didn’t care about the price of a ticker symbol on Wall Street.

Lucian Aldridge, the man who owned half of Manhattan’s...