Summary

Chapter 41, “Ottawa Illinois, 1933,” began the third part of the novel, “Justice.” It detailed that Radium Dial consistently denied its involvement with radium poisoning since 1925. Radium Dial was accepted by the small town as being a local business that provided economic security for residents. Meanwhile, Ottawa doctors were presumably not privy to the medical literature recently published by Dr. Martland. They considered the deaths and ailments of multiple former Radium Dial dial-painters a coincidence because their symptoms were not the same. Since the “economic downturn” nationally and within the radium industry, women who continued working for Radium Dial considered themselves fortunate (286). Despite Swen Kjaer describing signs of radium poisoning to the doctors, they did not report any of the former dial-painters’ curious cases to the federal agent.

Chapter 42 described Charlotte Purcell’s pain in her left elbow that began to swell. Tom, Catherine’s husband...