The Radium Girls

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Actually I finished this one about a couple of days back and been thinking of where to start about it. It was an incredibly sad book - there is no happy ending. It is a more of a consolatory ending but the villainous corporations get away with murder, the people who decided on those murders make a few millions before making their way out. The girls get compensated a pittance and that, after long court battles and insults and what now and of course, there is no recourse from death for any of them. So, it is sad to read about. But what I was wondering is about what will I take away from it.

The story of Radium girls was new to me. I saw the book as the winner of 2017 Goodread's Historical biography category and added to my list. So when I finally got around to reading it, right from the get-go, it was a challenge to read it without getting angry about the seemingly injustice of all that has happened to them.

I remember the Radium dial watches while growing up. We use to taken then to dark rooms and watch it glow with a fascination. It was mesmerizing. The story of the original dial painters employed by the large corporations across USA and the effect of Radium on those employed thus forms the story of the book.

The young girls - some as young as 14 - employed by these corporations paint those dials with a camel hair brush, lipping them every time they paint with Radium. Radium, being radio active, starts lodging in their bones, jaws and causing cancer to everyone of them. They start dying young and then at some point, a group of these girls - cancer-ridden and with irreversible damages to their bodies and staring at death, take a stand in the court and start a long process of trying to get some justice for what happened to them.

The justice they get in the end, to me, is very limited and though they end up changing the law on Occupational hazards and Workman compensations, the small amount of money they get as compensation and the struggle and fight they have to put up with the corporations is excruciatingly painful to read.

However, the book is more about the grittiness of these girls in pursuing the case in the middle of their multiple doctor visits, surgeries and intolerable pain. Each of the girls - not just the ones who went to the court - supporting the cause shows a lot of courage in the midst knowing that death is staring at them in face and that they are referred in the press as 'Living dead'.

Each of these girls stories - both the ones in the New Jersey plant and the ones in the Illinois plant - is described in detail. The initial days of fun, followed by the crippling illness and the visit to the doctors, for some - the diagnosis or the suspicion - for the others, death without knowing anything about the cause of their illness - often prolonged suffering and watching their bodies wither away.

The interesting - and the most saddening - subtext of the story is the intricate love stories of these girls. Most of them get married to their sweet hearts - in the midst of their hospital visits and illness - and the men support them till the death - knowing that they cannot conceive a baby or they carry a huge risk of passing on the poisoning to their kids as well. In fact, it falls to one of these husbands - Tom Donahue - to carry on the suit to a conclusion after his wife - Katherine Donahue - passes away during the appellate process.

The book - while being inspirational for woman of all ages and countries - on how to fight injustice and get a sense of justice to be served, is also a cautious reminder on the thirst for profit by big corporations which did not bat an eyelid to murder hundreds of these girls for a few dollars of profit. And having more stringent laws and norms have just made them find innovative ways to cheat the process and nothing more.

Overall, a very thought provoking and absolutely depressing book..but an amazing story of courage..