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Catherine Wolfe was a quiet Catholic girl from Ottawa, Illinois, and raised by her aunt and uncle. But times were tough following the first world war. Her aunt and uncle were elderly, and medical bills piled up. Work was hard to come by for anyone, but especially for a young woman. When a new business opened up in her town, Catherine didn’t want to pass up on the employment opportunity and gratefully, even eagerly, pursued employment. It was a decision that would impact the direction of the rest of her young life.

Catherine looked forward to her daily work at Radium Dial, a company that hired mostly women, and most of them young women, to paint the luminous dials using radium paint for an industry that was booming. The girls were assured repeatedly by the company that the glowing paint was safe. Using their lips to point the tips of their brushes was how a good employee was to perform her duties, and doing so would make her work the best it could be.

Catherine wanted to please her employers. They were a family at Radium Dial, so she pursued her work with vigor and effort. Her attention to detail made her very productive, and the compensation she received for her hours of employment was better than she could have ever dreamed. Making new friends, and ultimately meeting and marrying her husband, Tom, her life stretched before her. Everything was good, happy, and hopeful.

Until her friends started to get sick. Yes, Catherine had a few odd symptoms, but those were easily explained away. Catherine developed a niggling feeling somewhere in her gut that things weren’t right. But Radium Dial assured her and her friends that the paint was safe. They wouldn’t lie to her, would they? And yet, more and more girls developed inexplicable sicknesses. Then they began to die. Doctors refused to put a name to the illness mysteriously plaguing the women. It was coincidence, they said. It was many other things� but it was not � absolutely not � radium poisoning.

Collusion by the powerful and wealthy is hard to overcome, but when Catherine finally became too sick to deny what was happening to her despite the company’s refusal to acknowledge the same truth, her family and friends knew something needed to be done. Her faith had sustained her, her family and friends had helped her, but Catherine needed justice, and justice would take money. A lot of money. What was she to do?

The story of Catherine Donohue is told lovingly and poignantly in Luminous. Readers are drawn along through a story filled with eagerness, hope, faith and friendship, but with the skill I’ve come to expect from Samantha Wilcoxson. As always, her writing tugs at the heart all along the way. I knew how Catherine’s story would end, and yet, I couldn’t help but find myself still hoping it would end differently.

Luminous is a tale of loss and sorrow, joy and pain told with bittersweet attention and care. If you enjoy historical fiction, women’s history, and biography about the lives of the forgotten, this book is for you. It’s time Catherine Donohue’s life is portrayed to the next generation of social justice seekers.