Duped

Amid simultaneous mid-life and mid-career crises, nurse Joni Bohne planned a professional project wherein, at the age of seventy, she would feign a level of mental incompetence that would necessitate her relocation to an assisted living facility. At Borealis facility, Joni hoped to gather data on both what it feels like to be institutionalized and what it feels like to be treated as a person with dementia. Her intent was to contribute to her profession with personal and professional insights regarding the institutionalized old by writing this book. During her stay, she meets a host of remarkable characters—persons whose lives, already complicated by deficits related to aging and illness, are additionally bedeviled by grief, loss, PTSD, survivor's guilt, and loneliness. A tug of war between Joni's light-hearted and heavy-hearted attitudes towards growing old is apparent throughout her story. Accordingly, the project unexpectedly evolves into a personal journey as Joni tangles with her spirituality, discovers what growing old means to her, and falls in love.
Fiction and non-fiction blurs into an autobiography that hopes to give account of the reader more than the author.