Digging the Golden Fungus

The SwiftPad Insurgency, the second book in the SwiftPad trilogy, follows the founders and original crew of the Portland-based social media application SwiftPad. Nate Schuette, who wrote a sensational novel thirty years earlier (see Barckmann's novel Farewell the Dragon), shows up in Portland with Paula Flayer, his promiscuous seventy-five-year-old girlfriend who has not physically aged since her late twenties. But Ben Cadez, former Nixon operative and Paula's one-time lover, also wields the power of the youth-preserving Golden Fungus and is now a Republican candidate for President. They are all in the crosshairs of a deranged and corrupt President, and Portland must decide whether to co-opt or fight.