Hopeful Gardens

About the Book

Hopeful Gardens is an extremely humorous, bizarre voyage into the concealed world of a nursing home! It is the real nursing home story, written and illustrated by Sandra Stack, BSN, RN. The incidents in this book occurred over seven years ago. No staff member remains employed by Hopeful Gardens at this time. All involved residents have since passed; any resemblance to a living person is purely coincidental.

About the Author

Sandra (Buker) Stack was born on October 4, 1958, in Braintree, Massachusetts, a small quiet town south of Boston. She attended the University of Massachusetts-Boston and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Science and Nursing and was inducted into Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing upon graduation. She has studied art on a college level and received merit for her artwork at several art shows both in Massachusetts and Florida, a much-enjoyed pastime of Sandra’s. After moving to Florida, Sandra worked as a hospital nurse until changing to long-term care, where she has been working for several years. During this part of her career, she kept a diary of events that were humorous and positive; these events are the basis of her book. Sandra felt that institutions such as these, which provide care for the aged, have obtained a negative stigma; yet during her years in LTC, she began to see things not so negative and not quite as bad as its reputation would have it. So she started to write down the humorous situations that occurred in order to allow the world to see an “old folks’ home” for what it really is and to observe it from a different light, a better light, a light that would show not only just it’s serious side but also it’s delightful, silly, ridiculous side; the side of a nursing home that most of the world misses.