For Women’s History Month, the Pico Rivera Library Book Club is reading Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore. The newly discovered element of radium is incorporated into products from body lotion to tonic water to watch dials. Hundreds of young women worked in radium-dial factories where they casually painted dials with radium using paintbrushes. Soon, these women began to fall ill. The factories and the government ignored claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women’s cries of corruption. These brave shining women found themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America’s early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers’ rights.

For adults