Cathy C. (cathyskye) - , reviewed on 3/19/2022 + 2307 more book reviews

After reading Moore's The Woman They Could Not Silence and having it be one of my Best Reads of the Year, I remembered that I had a copy of Radium Girls, so I had to read it, too. Guess what? Radium Girls is also one of my Best Reads of the Year, which means that whenever Kate Moore has a new book published, I'm buying it.

Moore's writing style brings all the people involved, all the facts, to life. Reading from today's more enlightened perspective, what people were doing with radium in the early twentieth century was not only nauseating but horrifying. (For example, the radium waste from the dial-painting factories looked like sand, so it was offloaded to schools for their playground sandboxes.) But, you have to cut them some slack. These people didn't realize the time bomb they were treating so cavalierly. That all changed once it became known how deadly radium is.

The corporate greed shown boggled the mind as well as the legal wranglings to avoid having their profits cut into. The unbridled greed wasn't surprising, and neither was the difference in the companies' reactions to what was done when it was discovered male lab workers were becoming ill versus what was done when the female dial painters became ill.

Moore outlines just what these young women had to endure, both physically and mentally, as they fought for justice. And what a group of women! Knowing it was already too late for them, they continued to fight their legal battles for those who would follow after them. What makes this piece of history even more poignant is how Moore brings each woman to life. These women weren't just court cases with gruesome physical wounds; Moore reminds readers how pretty they were. How they liked to spend those high wages they were making. The clothes and hats they liked to wear. How they loved parties and planned for their weddings and dreamed of the children they would have. How they laughed and loved and found strength they didn't even know they had. In showing how they lived, not just how they died, Moore puts the heart and soul into this chapter of history-- and makes it a chapter we should all know and remember.

Kate Moore, thank you for bringing Catherine Wolfe Donohue, Katherine Schaub, Grace Fryer, Margaret Looney, Pearl Payne, and the other Radium Girls back into the spotlight. Their stories should never be forgotten.

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