One of the most promising retirement alternatives today is the Assisted Living Facility, a residence in which elderly people can live autonomously yet be provided with necessary services like food, housekeeping, on-premises medical attention and social activities. Most of the information available to prospective residents and their adult children comes from the brochures of these very enterprises and a handful of books on the subject. None of these publications were written by a resident of one of these facilities. Carol Netzer has been a resident in assisted living facilities for over four...