Customer Reviews

Radium Halos: A Novel about the Radium Dial Painters

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Plot/Storyline: 5 Stars

Told from the viewpoint of Helen Waterman as an elderly woman, this was a novel to tug at the heart. Her cavalier, almost oblivious attitude, at the abuse she has suffered and continues to have heaped upon her made it seem even more horrific. Helen is not just old; she also suffers from a mental problem stemming from her time working at the factory.

The storyline flowed evenly with flashbacks out of time. Both storylines, from young Helen to current day older Helen, were each riveting in their own way. Usually, when I read a novel written in this manner, with two seperate storylines, I find myself rushing through one to get to continue the storyline I am enjoying most. In this case, that didn't happen as both were of equal interest.

The author did a terrific job of staying `in character' with Helen, never deviating from her viewpoint. Helen is a little slow at times, uneducated, and confused. However, she still managed to convey all events in their entirety.

Character Development: 5 Stars

Helen was such a joy to read about and see through the eyes of that it will make readers fall in love with her. She is a sweet soul who has intermittent insights of brilliance into the character of others. She will make you laugh and cry.

The other characters were amazingly well developed for the format. Each character had depth and unique personality.

Writing Style: 5 Stars

Ms. Stout has done a wonderful job of capturing the spirit of the times with her writing style. Helen's voice shines with her accent that is just right for the story. You can truly hear every voice in this novel.

The descriptions are concise, yet vivid. The sentence structure flows easily for a smooth read.

Editing/Formatting: 5 Stars

Both were of professional quality.

Rating: PG-15 for Adult Situations

Since everyone else has already given a description of what this book is about, I will jump to my review. This story captured and held my attention from the very first paragraph. I became personally attached to Helen as if I knew her. I gasped out loud when her mysterious secret was unveiled and laughed and cried throughout the whole story. I didn't know how it was going to end, actually I didn't want it to end. I have recommended Radium Halos to many friends as a must read. It is a well written, fast paced, educational novel. It would make a fabulous movie.

In the 1920s the Radium Dial Company opened a factory in Illinois producing luminous paint made from radium. This paint was used to paint clock faces, safety signs, even watches for soldiers-anything that needed to glow in the dark. The primarily female workers at this factory and a similar one in New Jersey were told that the paint was harmless and were even encouraged to lick their paint brushes to sharpen them. This ingestion of the radioactive paint led to severe health problems and sometimes death of many of the workers. Five of them, known in the media as the Radium Girls, sued their former employer and won, thereby establishing several legal precedents in the U.S. regarding individual worker rights and labor safety standards.

Radium Halos is a fictional story based on these true events. The narrator is Helen Waterman, a 65-year-old mental patient who worked at the Radium Dial factory when she was 16. While the subject matter is intense, the tone of the novel is surprisingly light. Thanks is due to Helen who adds humor through her naive and bluntly honest outlook. Her periodic flashbacks introduce the people who have moved in and out of her life in the past 50 years. Author Shelley Stout excels in making these characters feel real, never sacrificing detail in favor of stereotypes. We feel for the characters as Helen does: we are irritated with nagging niece Pearl but understand why she's that way; we feel affection for young friend Adrienne but are anxious about some choices she's made; we defer to big sister Violet's decisions but secretly wonder if she's right after all.

Ideally for me, a novel will impart new knowledge and introduce characters I can quietly observe for a few days while reading and who stay with me for many more after that. Radium Halos does both. I've been introduced to some important history that I knew nothing about, and I've met a variety of colorful and interesting characters who will no doubt stay with me for quite a while.

Since I was in high school, I've known about the radium dial painters. There was a radioactive house in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania that got a lot of national attention. It wasn't part of a radium dial factory, though. A doctor had his wife and daughters packing needles full of radium that were used in medical procedures. The articles I read usually made mention of the radium dial factories, and the health problems encountered by the workers.

Ms. Stout goes beyond the science of the situation, and tells a story of a radium dial painter and her family, the trials they face with the clockfaces glowing metaphorically in the background. The story unfolds in a smooth mix of present-day action and flashbacks. The story is personal, and heartwarming, showing how a brief period in one's life can affect the rest of one's days. Helen, our storyteller, is a compelling lady, both vulnerable and strong, interacting with people like her niece, whose familial obligation guides her, and Adrienne, who genuinely cares for her.

Radium Halos is a novel of such depth and subtlety that, once started, is nearly impossible to put out of your mind. Seeing the world through Helen's mentally ill eyes is fascinating, but even more fascinating is what she's lived through. The characters are well-developed and very human - the jerks have redeeming qualities, and the angels have flaws. In fact, the entire book is an amazing representation of life: What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Don't be worried, like I was, that this will be a boring historical account of some dreary factory. Radium Halos was full of life, love, death and redemption, much in the vein of The Color Purple.

I purchased this book a year ago, but it kept getting pushed to the side. I was on a flight and needed something to read and saw this on my kindle and decided it was time to read it. I don't remember much of the rest of the flights I took that day. This is a fantastically absorbing novel that pulls you into the world of the radium dial painters not only through history but through the fictional story that the author has created for us.

I'll be honest and say that I didn't really know much about the radium dial (well, I know about radium!). I knew something happened and I knew people died but not that they were ingesting this stuff! I actually learned a lot about that situation and how sad and out of control it was. I love when I enjoy a book and learn something and don't feel like I'm having information shoved down my throat. Thank you to the author for presenting information in such a matter. Good for her.

The fictional part of the story was also very well done. I will admit that I was a little confused as to why the secrecy after all these years, but having said that, it didn't detract from the story at all. I loved how it all pulled together. From what I can gather, this is the first novel by this author that I've been able to find and it's such an amazing first effort - heck, had I not went looking, I would have sworn it was from a seasoned author. She manages to bring you into Helen's life and and into the factory and subsequent years. I felt so connected to the characters that I found myself trying to talk to a few of them, trying to make them see things MY. I'm sure my fellow passengers thought I was completely crazy.

This book is highly recommended for those that enjoy not only historical fiction, but also good general fiction. Unless you only read one genre, this is something you would probably enjoy. It goes on my must read for the year, wish I had read it sooner!

I read this book on my Kindle last weekend when I was on some long flights and waiting in airports. A few years ago I read a book called Radium Girls by Claudia Clark for a chemistry class in college. Since I enjoyed learning through that book, this book, which is a work of fiction, sounded right up my alley.

Radium Halos is about a woman named Helen. Helen is now an older woman who lives in a mental institution, but she was one of the Radium Dial girls for a summer when she was 16-years-old. The book switches back and forth between telling the story of Helen as she worked in the factory (which was really an old school building) and her present day in the mental hospital and so on. The switches in time periods were a bit too subtle at times and made the story confusing and not flow (as I had to readjust my thoughts to what year the story was).

Helen worked in the factory with her sister and told the story of how they got there (by not telling the whole truth to their single parent father), the friends they made, and the adventures they had that summer before they returned home. In the present time period for Helen, she is being released from the mental hospital into the care of her niece (whom Helen raised after her sister passed away at a young age). Her niece is getting married soon and doesn't have a whole lot of time or patience for Helen, so that makes for some interesting situations as well.

The overall story sounds believable. Helen's narration thoughout has poor grammar throughout, which gives a bit more of an authentic feel to the girl who grew up in the 1910s-1920s and lived in the south. The choices and feelings of the girls and then Helen as an adult also seem authentic.

Overall it was a good read and can give some insightful information not only about the girls who worked in the Radium Dial factory, but about people who have been institutionalized without being boring and filled with just facts. The book didn't strike me as completely amazing, hence the 4/5 stars. I just didn't feel as emotionally vested in the characters as I could have been. Even the epilogue didn't give me as much information to wrap it all up as I had hoped.

Radium Halos by Shelley Stout is fascinating and deeply shocking. Historical fiction, this story follows the life of a midwestern farm girl and her sister who jump at the opportunity to earn big dollars working at the Radium Dial Co. painting dials with radium paint. Radium. The technique included ingesting the paint to sharpen the paint brush tip - radium paint. A little like mercury 40 years ago, where we played with it on our desks in school without the full knowledge of the dangers, women were told there was no danger and they were paid well. The danger was not then understood even though young women who worked there were aging rapidly, experiencing bone disintegration, teeth dropping out of their mouths and cancer.

That history coupled with a mystery that involves the death of an cruel man at the plant and a pact to never discuss the summer of the Radium Dial Company culminate into a story told by one of the women who, by her decision not to ingest the paint so long ago, is institutionalized for decades because she thinks she has the sickness. Finally, she is convinced to be tested by a lab and all of the truths come together into a life she can finally live.

Well worth the time.

This book is fiction based on the true story of the Radium Dial Painters. These were young women who worked in a factory, painting clock and watch dials with radium paint. Most of these women died tragic deaths, after suffering long illnesses from radium poisoning.

Shelley Stout held me captive with this story. She doesn't weigh us down with the facts and lawsuit details. That is better done in a nonfiction book. With Radium Halos, Stout gives us Helen Waterman, a woman who once worked in the Radium Dial factory and is now suffering with mild mental illness. She tells us her tale through memories, while struggling through each new day.

Helen's story encompasses and goes beyond life at that factory. Her character is vivid and incredibly real. Stout steps completely out of the way and allows Helen's voice to carry the story. And she does so brilliantly.

I truly enjoyed Radium Halos. More importantly, I commend Shelley Stoudt for opening the secret of the women who used radioactive paint to create luminous clock and watch dials at the Radium Dial Factory. It was historical fiction with a punch - an important story to be told.

Radium Halos is a remarkable fictional account of Helen, a North Carolina sixteen-year-old who worked in the Radium Dial Company in Illinois during the 1920s. Helen at age 65 suffers from an undefined mental problem, probably stemming from her proximity to and ingestion of the radioactive paint during her time at the factory.

Stoudt's use of a colloquial dialect for her naïve, educationally deficient, but observant main character, Helen, is consistent and easily understood. This task is not easily written but masterfully handled here. Helen's voice is distinct and ingenuous as the book alternates between her youth in the 1920s and her recalling of the events of her past with amazing clarity as a 65 year-old woman. I felt Helen sitting right beside me telling her story and I was sympathetic to her losses. Helen's sister, Violet, although dead for most of the novel, looms large in the reader's mind, as a powerful central character. Pearl, the resentful niece, is so well presented this reader constantly worried how she might negatively impact Helen's life. The other characters are all cast uniquely, but Helen's compelling voice will stay with me a long time.

What are the consequences of our actions? The author expertly explores this dilemma by interweaving a dual story. On the one hand, the young factory workers play what they perceive as an innocent prank causing a tragedy which they conspire to keep secret. On the other hand, the factory for which they work willfully exploits their workers, disregarding their well being. The author delicately balances how the factory workers dealt for years with ravaging physical effects caused by the paint, without being able to point fingers at the factory because they have pledged not to implicate themselves by revealing their association with it. My interest was perked concerning the legal ramifications the factory encountered years down the road and I would have liked to read more about that aspect.

I often include a quote I find provocative in my reviews. Helen considers what life has handed her. "But I really don't know which was worse. A lifetime missing a child you almost had, or a lifetime of wishing you could have younguns, but they never come."

Stoudt's expert descriptive technique makes me wish I could see this book in a movie version. I'd love to read more by this author.
- Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of Crestmont