As World War I raged across the globe, hundreds of young women toiled away at the radium-dial factories, where they painted clock faces with a mysterious new substance called radium. Assured by their bosses that the luminous material was safe, the women themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered from head to toe with the glowing dust. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" were considered the luckiest alive--until they began to fall mysteriously...

Discovering a series of antique paintings containing hidden glowing images, a young thrift-store aficionado investigates their origins and discovers the haunting true story of a group of young women artists, the Radium Girls, who used dangerous radioactive paint to create the world's first glow-in-the-dark products.

As the First World War spread across the world, young American women flocked to work in factories, painting clocks, watches and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous -- the girls shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in dust from the paint. However, as the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. It turned out that the very thing...