Mother's Medicine
Chapter 1, page 3

    With Dorothy's garden bounty to make bland stews interesting, there was just enough money for beer. They had needed five cases plus two six-packs a week, less now that Rebecca was gone Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Dorothy would not drink alone. The old-brand American beer cost Dorothy and Rebecca over two hundred dollars per month.  They drove behind Rainy's early Sunday morning, when most Bears River residents attended church services. Mr. Rainy, with few words and a tip of his trucker's cap, loaded up the back of their sedan.
   Dorothy stored the beer in the stone root cellar at their creek's edge. The bubbly, bitter amber was served in tall glasses and doled out as regularly as medicine.  It was Dorothy's belief that beer, along with earthy garden greens, home-baked goods, small portions of meat and a daily antihistamine or tranquilizer, would be the cure for what ailed her daughter, and was certainly the sustenance she herself needed to survive through a long widowhood.