Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Bookseller Created
Hearthside's Non Fiction
Get two free audiobooks AND support local bookstores
Make the switch
Bookseller pick
Send as gift
Add to Wish List
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Make the switch
Gift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingThe Radium Girls
The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
Narrator
Angela Brazil
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn more
Length
15 hours 52 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“Lip. Dip. Paint. Three little actions with devastating consequences for The Radium Girls, a select group of glamorous girls employed as watch dial painters during the early 20th century. This is the tragic, true account of young women, promised wealth and prominence as an employee of the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, yet delivered unexplained pain and suffering, betrayal and injustice. Determined to seek retribution for their impending death sentences, these gutsy gals fight for their families and for future safety standards for all. The sacrifices made by these brave women are awe-inspiring and unimaginably awful at the same time and will haunt my thoughts indefinitely.”
— Kristin • McLean & Eakin Booksellers
1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous—the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls.
As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive—their work—was in fact slowly killing them: they had been poisoned by the radium paint. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. And so, in the face of unimaginable suffering—in the face of death—these courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly, and instead became determined to fight for justice.
Drawing on previously unpublished sources—including diaries, letters, and court transcripts, as well as original interviews with the women's relatives—The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative account of an unforgettable true story. It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring Twenties, who themselves learned how to roar.
Kate Moore is a Sunday Times bestselling writer with more than a decade's experience in writing across varying genres, including memoir, biography, and history. She was the director of the critically acclaimed play about The Radium Girls called These Shining Lives.
Angela Brazil is a professional actor who is proud to be a long-standing member of the Resident Acting Company at Trinity Repertory Company. She also teaches at the Brown/Trinity Conservatory. Angela lives with her family in Lincoln, Rhode Island.