Scruples and Drams

Clearwater provided a safe haven for Jennie Phillips, an apprenticing druggist in her father’s store in the late nineteenth century. While on a routine trip to deliver a prescription out in the country, she is alarmed when she encounters what may be the ghost of a murdered Irish girl. She becomes obsessed with the unsolved case. At the same time, she struggles with her responsibility to uphold her father’s ethical practices when she learns how some women are using their over-the-counter patent medicines. Yet when she learns that rape and burglary can take place even in her village, Jennie realizes Clearwater is not as idyllic as she once thought, and for many women, the art of living isn’t as exact as dispensing.