Genetic scientist Robert Presto creates a drug for rejuvenation and life extension. Widely admired, he becomes the lover of Vivee Powers, a beautiful, ambitious woman with powerful political connections. However, financial crises strike, and public sentiment turns violently against rejuvenated older people. Now a reviled failure, Robert escapes to a life of decadence in Paraguay. Ultimately forced to repatriate after his Paraguayan adventure, Robert adopts a secret new identity as Dyre Holmgren and settles into the Toledo ...
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Genetic scientist Robert Presto creates a drug for rejuvenation and life extension. Widely admired, he becomes the lover of Vivee Powers, a beautiful, ambitious woman with powerful political connections. However, financial crises strike, and public sentiment turns violently against rejuvenated older people. Now a reviled failure, Robert escapes to a life of decadence in Paraguay. Ultimately forced to repatriate after his Paraguayan adventure, Robert adopts a secret new identity as Dyre Holmgren and settles into the Toledo Elderhostel. According to the Aging Laws, older people must choose between Elderhostel (a prison-like encampment) and Heavenwards (a drug-induced spiritual ecstasy for one year and then a peaceable death). Robert's friends and lovers in the Toledo Elderhostel include: Oona Mulcahey, Elderhostel lawyer and self-described founder of the Single Mothers Liberation Front; Oona's wild child daughter Thetis and others - disabled or not - under Oona's fierce protection; Lenny Leifer, raconteur and sculptor working in clay from the banks of the Maumee River (Mohammed Ali said he looked like a human bowling ball); Dr. Steve Monroe, dapper Elderhostel physician struggling through the mourning process; Regine Lingen Palisano, German-born survivor of World War II, New York homeless person, and expert in bedbug extermination; Johnny Rogers, leader of the elderly Gabbies in their televised sblattergun mock-battles against the youthful Fatties; and Najla Al-Musawi, larger-than-life organizational genius formerly committed to Calvinism and management of the finest whorehouse in South America. Themes reflect identity, family, community, sexuality, mortality, old-fashioned aging, the indefinite life span of the future (it's coming, folks), and love. And you really have to keep a sense of humor about the whole thing.
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