Book Summary

Luminous is a historical fiction based on the real-life radium girls in the 1920’s. this story follows a young woman named Catherine Donohue, who takes a job painting watch dials with radium not knowing the long-term effects. What starts as a great opportunity turns tragic when she and her coworkers become seriously ill from radiation exposure. The story follows her life and struggles with radiation poisoning and the strength and courage to fight the company that denied any responsibly in their illnesses. Ultimately contributing to changes in worker safety laws.

I chose this book because I am a x-ray tech and work with radiation daily, so I was interested in the story. 

On our trip for Luminous we went to Ottawa, IL, where the story and real factory used to be. We visited the site of the factory which has long since been torn down and took a Geiger counter to see how much radiation the site still gave off. We also went to the grave site of Catherine and another coworker and paid our respects. The first night we watched the movie Radium Girls. On Sunday, we went to Starved Rock to explore like they did in the book.