Linda’s Reviews > The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women > Status Update

This page describes a radium-damaged back that's similar to my own cancer-ridden back: crushed vertebrae. I had to wear a brace for over a year; fortunately, it wasn't all-metal like Grace Fryer's. And I didn't have a lawyer search going at the same time.

I wondered how the book would continue when I was about a quarter finished, but now I'm almost halfway and I hope it isn't entirely about the coming trials.

We've gotten to the point where people started realizing that so many women with similar symptoms who worked the same job can't be a coincidence, and some are getting lawyers involved. I'm surprised that this all is happening and I'm not very far into the book yet. I wonder what's going to be taking up that much space in the history.

While it's not written as a horror story, it feels like one to the 21st-century reader as the women (really, teenage girls) are encouraged to roll their paint brushes in a radium-laced paint, then in their mouths to make a fine tip. Kate Moore also echoes the headlines of the day that kept proclaiming radium's positive effects. But the first death has occured, and the description was pretty gruesome.