Book Review: The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

If I told you I’d read a book featuring The Society of the Living Dead, coffins that glow in the dark even after being buried for years, and young women with bodies that are literally rotting to pieces before their eyes, you might think I’m describing a horror novel—and reasonably so. But actually, it’s non-fiction. All of these things really happened, and they happened to The Radium Girls. 

I had heard of The Radium Girls before and knew some of the details of their plight, but lately, it seemed like they kept popping up in other media I was consuming—for example, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. I was ready to learn more, so I finally made the dive into Kate Moore’s book The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. 

When I tell you this is horrific. It always seems to be the case that true stories are far more horrifying than fiction, simply because they’re true.

For those unfamiliar with the story, The Radium Girls follows a group of young women who began working in factories during World War I painting watch faces with special glow in the dark paint, an item whose demand had sky rocketed due to an attempt to produce many of them for soldiers. The special glowing paint the girls used was made with the new “miraculous” element that was all the rage at the moment: radium. 

As they painted, they would “point” the paintbrushes using their mouths—at the encouragement of their employers—as well as eating and drinking around the paint and wearing zero protective equipment. As time went on, and in other factories across the U.S., some of the girls even began painting themselves with leftover paint, using it as makeup or wearing their going out clothes to work so that they would be dusted with the shimmering powder left behind from stirring the paint. Despite being reassured repeatedly by their management that the paint was 100% safe and nothing could happen to them from being in such constant close contact with it, the girls started to develop horrific health problems ranging from tooth and jaw issues (which…is putting it mildly considering one of the girls had her jaw come off in the dentist’s hands) to growths, anemia, cancers, deterioration of the bones, necrosis, and more.  

And that’s just the first part of the story. The rest of the story comes when the girls began the legal battle to try to get some justice for their plight, to attempt to do anything to rectify the fact that CEOs and top scientists at their company constantly wore protective gear and never handled radium directly because they knew how dangerous it was, but had no issue exposing the painters to these circumstances, and then had no intention of helping them in any way despite their lives being destroyed, and, in most cases, taken from them altogether. 

It’s strange saying you enjoyed reading something that was so heartbreaking, but I did enjoy this book and I really enjoyed learning more about this subject. I think Moore did an excellent job with this, because she really brought the girls to life on the page. She made them more than just what horrible things happened to them. She wrote about their personalities and their hobbies and their lives and loves, about how they impacted the people around them. I really felt like I knew these girls. 

I also really enjoyed getting some perspective on the job itself. I was captivated by the fact that, despite being factory work at what was arguably the tail end of the Second Industrial Revolution, being a dial painter was considered a glamorous job, in part due to the glimmering effects brought on by working with the paint, but also largely because the girls were making bank (I mean, for 1917), so they were able to buy the nicest clothes and shoes and jewelry, fancy furs and silk dresses. In fact, they would often be seen walking home in their finery, dusted in the remnants of their glowing paint, and produce a sense of envy and admiration in their onlookers. The dial painting job was the best thing that ever happened to them—and then suddenly, it was the worst thing that ever happened to them, as they literally watched their bodies fall apart before their very eyes. Watched their dreams deteriorate as their main focus became just staying alive. Watched the company men walk away unscathed over and over while they suffered. 

Additionally, Moore really knows how to tell a story. She sets the scene, she paints for us a vivid setting, she introduces her characters, gets us attached to them, and then starts throwing the action at us. If you didn’t know this was true, you’d think it was masterful novel. She even has some last minute “plot twists”, even as late as the epilogue, that had me nearly screaming. 

If there is any part of you that is curious about the plight of these young women and everything they went through, I highly encourage you read this book. Even today, more than a hundred years after the events, this is still so impactful and really spoke to me on a lot of levels. As previously mentioned, there are really some truly horrific moments. There’s a death scene fairly early on in the book that was almost unfathomable in how awful it was, and is written in a way that makes it difficult not to imagine how that might be. 

As the book goes on, there’s a lot of discussion of legal matters, but Moore keeps it as accessible as possible, and really manages to keep readers on the edges of our seats as we wait along with the Radium Girls to find out what happens next. 

I think the only thing that bothered me about this book is just…knowing that all this happened. There’s a part that talks about how it’s awful what happened to them but that they made lasting changes and really had an influence on labor laws and how cases like this were treated, and I couldn’t help but feel like, okay great, but they still died, and if they didn’t, they were still incredibly sick, and, in many ways, had their lives ruined. And it is just so sad.  

This is a five star read, easy. I very much recommend this, to anyone who is interested in history or just really heartbreaking, awe inspiring stories, featuring real, strong women. 

Have you read The Radium Girls? Do you want to? I haven’t watched the movie based on this story yet, either, but am considering it – did any of you see it enjoy it? What other good non-fiction have you read lately? Let me know in the comments!