Most people are in some part familiar with the story of “America’s shining women” – the dial painters of the First World War that are at once symbolic of a new wave of women’s liberation and horrific treatment in the workplace. My knowledge of the radium girls was largely limited to the legend of poisoned women whose corpses are still radioactive a century later, glowing bones in lead-lined coffins. I was completely, irrevocably unprepared for the harrowing tale of these women’s fight for justice against an institution determined to silence them by any means necessary.

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