Author of 'Radium Halos' here Nov. 6

In 1922, the Radium Dial Company opened a plant for painting the luminescent dial numbers on clocks and watches in Ottawa, Ill.

Located in an old school building, the plant would eventually employ about 1,000 girls and young women a day, painting thousands of watch and clock faces per shift.

A product called Luna, a mixture of phosphorous and radium, was painted on the numerals of the faces, using camel hair brushes which were kept sharply pointed for the fine work by kissing or licking the tips.

Over the years, as many as 4,000 women, some as young as 14, may have worked at the Radium Dial Co. as painters. Within a few years, radiation poisoning, specifically a condition called radium jaw, began affecting many of the workers.

Unknown numbers of cases of cancer and death from the radium followed the workers for years or decades, depending on how long the “walking dead” lived. “Radium Halos” is the fictionalized story of a few of these women, two of whom came from Belmont and only worked for one summer.

Stout has crafted a fine novel of a horrifying episode in American occupational history. “Radium Halos” is the story of Helen and Violet Waterman, 16 and 18 years old, who leave Belmont for a summer to work at the Radium Dial Co. While in Illinois, they make new friends, become implicated in an accidental death, find romance, and, for one of the sisters, pick up radium poisoning. Later in life, the surviving sister is put in a state mental hospital, although eventually she is released to outpatient status.

“Radium Halos” traverses back and forth between the 1920s and the 1960s-’70s as the surviving sister tells her story from both ends of the period. The sister recounts the story from the gaity of an adventure in far off Illinois, making big “industrial” money, to the lonely life of a mental patient who has seen so many of her family and friends die. Opposing the horrors of the factory and of life in general, there are the joys of closeness and developing bonds, though sometimes even the best bonds are broken. Throughout, a secret must be maintained, a secret that surfaces not once, but twice, in surprising ways.

The book is not perfect, but books never are. The editors at HarperCollins, who once considered publishing the title, thought more of the court trials that followed the radium girls in the 1930s should have come out, but, civil courtroom procedings can be very boring.

I felt that perhaps the accidental death and some of the relationships could have been subtracted, and more of the girls and their fates focused on. In the end, “Radium Halos” is an excellent novel about a little known part of America that deserves to be read, that should be read, and that gives the reader, at its completion, a satisfying ending.

Stout does a fantastic job placing the novel into Southern context with masterful use of the syntax and colloquial language of the small town, rural South of Belmont. References to the times and locations beyond the immediate environs, such as the big city of Charlotte, are accurate. And Stout is spot-on when she relates the setting and the activities in Ottawa and the horrors that follow the summer of work and frivolity.

After reading the book, I became somewhat obsessed with this bleak period in America’s environmental and public health history, forcing me to do some research. I was startled by the lack of information, though when one considers the time period when most of the horror evolved, immediately prior to and during the Great Depression, and the time that has since elapsed, perhaps I shouldn’t have been.

What I did find, however, is that in 1987, a woman named Carole Langer had produced a documentary about the Radium Dial Co. and Ottawa, called “Radium City.” With some work I was able to find an e-mail address for Langer and was able to contact her. Langer agreed to rent Literary Bookpost a DVD (not publicly available) of the documentary which had won critical acclaim when it was released. As part of our book signing event, we will show the documentary, which played at film festivals and select theaters two decades ago.

Aside from the accurate potrayal of the Radium Dial Co., “Radium City” stalks the city of Ottawa, seeking the relatives of victims, the remnants of the company and the hazards left behind. After the two buildings once used by the Radium Dial Co. were torn down, debris was scattered in various landfills and other areas around the city.

Eventually, there were 13 Superfund sites left for cleanup due to the debris; several of these sites have yet to be touched. The Ottawa cemetery drives Geiger counters wild due to the number of former workers of the Radium Dial Co. buried there. Stories of survivors and friends of survivors, as well as surviving workers from the plant, paint a bleak picture of collaboration between government, science, the medical profession and industry in Depression-era America, a picture that only began to come to light when the extent of the damage grew too large to cover up.

What transpired in Ottawa, of course, was repeated in other locations, under other circumstance, across America. But what happened in Ottawa did foster the beginnings of what would one day become OSHA. How many lives were sacrificed for these beginnings will probably never be known, but it may be the only good and lasting thing that ever came out of the Radium Dial Co.

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Signing and film

On Saturday, Nov. 6, beginning at 2:30 p.m., Literary Bookpost at 110 S. Main St., in downtown Salisbury will host a book signing and a documentary film viewing on the Radium Dial Company of Ottawa, Ill.  

Author Shelley Stout will  sign copies of her novel, “Radium Halos: A Novel about the Radium Dial Painters.” Originally from Annandale, Va., Stout lives in Charlotte, where she enjoys spending time with her two grown sons. She also enjoys volunteering at a local homeless shelter. She is a contributing writer for Parent Teacher Magazine, and her award-winning fiction has appeared in anthologies, The Storyteller Magazine and online at WordRiot.

Stout will talk with her audience and sign copies of her book at the beginning of the event. About 3:30, the 1987 documentary film produced by Carole Langer, “Radium City,” will be shown. At the conclusion of the film, Stout will continue with discussion and book signing.

For additional information about this event, call 704-630-9788 or visit www.literarybookpost.com.