The Radium Girls

The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

By: Kate Moore

Narrated by: Angela Brazil

The year was 1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous - the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls.

As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive - their work - was in fact slowly killing them: They had been poisoned by the radium paint. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. And so, in the face of unimaginable suffering - in the face of death - these courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly and instead became determined to fight for justice.

Drawing on previously unpublished sources - including diaries, letters, and court transcripts as well as original interviews with the women's relatives - The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative account of an unforgettable true story. It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring 20s who themselves learned how to roar.

©2017 Kate Moore (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Tragic, enraging story

If you could sum up The Radium Girls in three words, what would they be?

corporate malfeasance, horrifying, important

What other book might you compare The Radium Girls to and why?

This book is reminiscent of other works that document scientific misconduct in America, such as The Plutonium Files, Imbeciles, and Medical Apartheid. It is especially notable for the way in which it emphasizes the humanity of the women whose lives it documents. Although the story of the radium girls was sketched in a brief outline in my first ever lab safety training, I always assumed that the path to remuneration and industry reform had been straightforward and smooth. This book instead illustrates not only the importance of incorporating societal values into scientific endeavors, but also the difficulties of doing so when money and corporations' welfares are at stake. It is powerful and timely and speaks to the continuing need for governmental checks on corporate greed.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Angela Brazil's narration was very strange. Her vocal intonations and rhythms often sounded more like a computer reading text than a human, and the emphasis was often misplaced within a sentence. This was jarring and detracted from the continuity of the story.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

From ghost girls to the living dead

The Voice of the Ghost Women Speaking

One night when I was a few chapters into this book, I woke up because my child was shaking me, asking me urgently what was wrong. I'd been screaming, she said, and yelling 'no no, no.' I had dreamed that I had been painting luminous hours onto watch faces, dipping a camel hair brush into paint, using my lips to make it into a fine point -and that I was melting like the clocks in Salvador Dali's ubiquitous 1931 painting "The Persistence of Memory."

Kate Moore's "The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women" (2016, U.K. edition; 2017, U.S. edition) is really well written - and utterly horrifying. Almost 100 years ago, radium was the latest and greatest craze, used in tonics and medicines, and to make self illuminating watches. The U.S. Radium Corp. had an artist studio in New Jersey. In Illinois, there was the Radiant Dial Corporation. Very young women - some were only 14! - used radioactive paint to painstakingly make hundreds of watch faces a day. They ingested so much paint that they sparkled at the end of the day, and their bones glowed after death. Actually, they'll glow for more than 10 centuries.

Moore's book isn't unremitting horror. The Radium Girls - both in New Jersey and in Illinois- fought their employers, and, to varying degrees, won. Grace Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice sued U.S. Radium, settling right before trial. All were incredibly sick - teeth fell out, bones necrotized, and huge sarcomas distorted and destroyed arms and legs. Some women's mouths were so honeycombed that they simply lifted jawbones out of their mouths.

Catherine Wolfe Donahue, a Radium Girl who lived and worked in Ottawa, Illinois, didn't just settle her case. She took Radiant Dial to the Illinois Industrial Commission and not only won, but helped change labor laws. Workplaces became safer. Donahue's case was appealed so many times she died before the US Supreme Court finally resolved her case.

Moore's book didn't include some historical context that would explain how the women's conditions were so bad. Penicillin wasn't discovered until 1928, and antibiotics weren't available for several decades. Antibiotics wouldn't have prevented sarcomas, but they would have arrested the disfiguring abscesses and necrosis, and alleviated some excruciating pain. It's demoralizing to realize that there are undoubtedly people in third world countries - the world's recycling and dumping grounds - who are exposed repeatedly to small amounts of radiation now in manufactured goods, and don't have access to antibiotics and medical care.

There's also a difference in the laws Moore didn't address clearly: personal injury and workers' compensation laws and statutes of limitations are state specific, which means the rights of and obligation of injured workers depend on where the injury happened. Sometimes there is federal jurisdiction, but often there is not. The question of what laws apply in what situations is clearer now almost a century later - and there are certainly more laws - but it's still a hotly debated subject in the courts and in administrative law proceedings. If Moore had clarified the subject matter/personal jurisdiction questions, she would have ended up with an incredibly boring discussion the story didn't deserve. What is clear is that the persistence and the sacrifice of the Radium Girls - many donated their bodies to study after death - started what became the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).

Moore clearly respected and loved the women whose stories she told, and it was a good book. The narration was fine, but occasionally a little uneven in pacing. To be fair to Angela Brazil, the narrator, that was probably an editing issue.

The title of this review is a quote from the book, from proceedings of 'The Society of the Living Dead'. That was a group of Radium Girls formed to help change employment safety laws.

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Must read!

Well written, well narrated and well researched. I could not stop listening! Such brace determined women!

Excellent book

This book made me mad! I listened to this during the Covid-19 pandemic and it made me think of employees in factories getting sick and maybe even dying. It made me think of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, for even though that was a sudden and tragic event, it was employers not caring about employees at all. I was infuriated through a lot of this book.

The author showcased several particular workers which humanized them. It's easier to care about individuals than statistics. The stories of working conditions, illnesses, lawsuits, personal lives, and medical issues were all compelling. I would recommend this book.

I notice that it was made into a movie and I've added it to my Amazon Watchlist.

I finished this weeks ago and I think it's my last overdue review.

Sad story

Interesting and sad story that needed to be told. Fascinating and well written. The book gets a little long and tedious. The story could have been told in about 1/2 the words. Can be depressing at times.