Through a memoir-style narrative of Alfred Buber’s mid-life crisis, David Schmahmann explores love, lust, poverty and power in “The Double Life of Alfred Buber” as he takes a microscope to the difficult journey people go through in finding out who they truly are.

Born in Rhodesia, Buber’s parents sent him to America after guerrilla wars break out in the country following its independence from Britain. With no plan or resources and immediately sensing himself as a burden on his uncle Nigel, Alfred commits himself to doing what he is told and starts to work hard.

Combining his sense of duty and hard work combined with his natural understanding of the power of money, Alfred lives frugally throughout university and law school and is able to purchase a plot of land before graduation on which he builds an impractically extravagant home—a testament to his success. But Alfred’s commitment to the “American Dream” leaves him with a void that nothing “Western” can fill.

Alfred Buber’s life consists of a series of masks. In his public life he is serious, traditional and tough – a person who seems to have things figured out. In private, Alfred’s true nature is exposed using poetic diction that works to reveal the vulnerable nature of his unfulfilled desires. While he may be Mr. Buber to those at Henshaw & Potter Law Firm, he is more specifically a man with such a strong attraction towards Asian women that he suddenly finds himself in Bangkok in a desperate attempt to forge an affectionate connection with a woman.

The Star of Love Bar is where he finds Nok. She is only one among many stained red robes bobbing between the laps of men sitting along the bar but Buber sees something quite different. He sees a beautiful young woman caught in the vicious cycle of poverty, a woman whom he loves, a woman whom he can never speak of.

And there marks the beginning of Alfred’s emotional downward spiral as he attempts to navigate the gyre that is his desires and the vulnerable places he has allowed his mind and body to wander in an attempt to find meaning and substance in his life.

“The Double Life of Alfred Buber” offers a unique narrative, presenting the story out of chronological order which serves to blur the lines of what is real and what isn’t—precisely the issue that Buber seems to be confronting. Schmahmann ties in issues of morals vs. ethics, love vs. lust, conformity vs. violation of law and material success vs. happiness to create a story that is compelling, emotionally conscious and even relatable – however far away Nok truly is to the reader and even to Buber himself.