What a harrowing tale of capitalist greed, callous disregard for the human cogs of industry, and the dismissal of women and their health concerns! The author is a talented storyteller, and I felt really attached to the girls by the end.

While you can't necessarily blame a company for exposing their workers and consumers to danger unknowingly, you can certainly loathe the company that knows (or tries very hard not to know) and does so anyway. The clear knowledge of the radium corporations about the harm of the radioactive materials is abundantly proven and catalogued, and the young women employed to make use of the material (and their families) never had a chance. Every workplace harm saga I learn about, I am reminded of Upton Sinclair's observation: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

It was kind of boggling to imagine a time in which humans aren't so very cognizant of the extreme danger of radioactivity. I know I live in the luxury of a fairly advanced scientific age and the widespread dispersal of knowledge, but I can't really imagine seeing a glowing substance that couldn't readily be washed off and lingered so long and not fearing it has ill effects. Makes you really contemplate all of the lurking dangers around us, both known and unknown.

In our present litigious age, it is not too surprising that the legal battles for these women was an uphill challenge, but I was struck by the fairly remarkable ability and capacity of the women to do so. Present day workers are tied up in forced arbitration and even more out of hand legal cost and expenditure. The author points out the limited legal protections workers had at the time, but I fear we've regressed to a pretty similar situation.

This book was not written by an academic or expert in the field, so the story is very (intentionally) focused on the women themselves, painting a picture of their likeness and personalities, and is written in a dramatic voice (rather than a clinical or educational tone). The research for this book is largely based on firsthand written sources, secondhand accounts, and contemporary reporting. There is a lot of description of the appearance of the girls (not just of their medical condition but of their features), their religious faith, and their interpersonal relationships and families. I think the author did a good job of calling out when she was speculating (e.g. the lawyer LIKELY greeted the girls). The author acknowledges this in her final note, and, while this did not bother me, I could see how this might not be everyone's favorite way to learn this story. The tone overall feels very much like a podcast episode.

The women involved in this story were all white women, and I imagine that this is because the dial painting was a well-paid job not offered to women of color at the time, but I think this should have been clarified and mentioned. The women in this book were, true to this time period, reportedly very religious, but I was at times borderline put off by the author's depiction of the praying and solicitation of divine intervention. To be fair, I am nonreligious and was raised nonreligious, so I often have a hard time contemplating folks being so pious while facing unspeakable horrors. Also, I think that it was hard to keep some of the women straight, and while I can certainly understand the passionate author wanted to tell as many stories as possible, the book likely would have been more incisive with a focus on fewer girls.

There is fairly graphic description of the medical suffering, particularly dental complications, and conditions of these girls, and some folks may have a hard time reading or listening to these descriptions. If you are interested in workers' rights, women in the workplace, and evolution of human's appreciation and understanding of radioactivity, I think this story is very compelling.