Luellen Smiley is a creative nonfiction writer, author, columnist, and historian whose writing is deeply rooted in a controversial personal history. She is the daughter of Allen Smiley, a close friend, associate, and business partner of notorious Las Vegas gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Her father was sitting only feet from Siegel when Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills on June 20, 1947.
That extraordinary childhood history became the foundation for Smiley’s first book, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter’s Tribute, published in 2017. The memoir explores what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a man connected to organized crime while trying to reconcile her love for her father with the secrecy, fear, and criminal world surrounding him.
Smiley’s work has appeared in publications including the New York Post, MORE Magazine, Southern California newspapers, and Authorlink. She wrote the newspaper column Smiley’s Dice—Adventures in Livingness, which earned a Blue-Ribbon Award from the California Newspapers Association for her Growing Up With Gangsters columns.
Her interest in her father’s history also led her to become a researcher and commentator on organized crime history. She has participated in television, radio, and documentary interviews.
Smiley’s next book, Gaslighting Greta, will be published this year. A personal story that reads like fiction. Her own website describes the project as exploring a woman whose life is destabilized by gaslighting and psychological manipulation.
Her writing career reflects a recurring theme: using personal experience and research to uncover the truth behind complicated relationships and extraordinary lives. From the secretive world surrounding her father and Bugsy Siegel to the deeply personal territory of Gaslighting Greta, Smiley’s work transforms difficult experiences into stories of survival, discovery, and ultimately reclaiming one’s voice.
Luellen Smiley is an author whose life has given her an unusual perspective on secrecy, manipulation, family loyalty, betrayal, and survival—and she uses that perspective as the raw material for her nonfiction storytelling.
FRIENDS
A VERY CLOSE FRIEND that trades you in for a step up the ladder, to improve their bank statement is unjustified malice. This is the most disappointing of all adventures in livingness. At my age, I am still adapting to this egregious consciousness. How do we all get through the maze of life’s obstacles? FRIENDS AND FAMILY. Your pet loves you, your home and garden blooms, your car runs because you service it, your teeth don’t fall out because you go to the dentist but REAL FRIENDS HAVE YOUR BACK.
Thank you to all of my friends that are in my cradle of LIFE. I am sensitive and Im proud!.life.
Sounds as if you’ve been through a bad one, LouLou. Sorry to hear of it. I try not to maintain a cynical edge when it comes to people, but lately I’ve been screwed three times by people who I thought were sincere and trustworthy – only to discover they were self-serving and lying jerks. I know from whence you’re comimg from, my dear.
life.
4 responses to “FRIENDS”
Sensitive is good as long as it’s usefulness is applied correctly.
LikeLike
So true, and the selfish greedy ones know who they are.
LikeLike
Sounds as if you’ve been through a bad one, LouLou. Sorry to hear of it. I try not to maintain a cynical edge when it comes to people, but lately I’ve been screwed three times by people who I thought were sincere and trustworthy – only to discover they were self-serving and lying jerks. I know from whence you’re comimg from, my dear.
________________________________
LikeLike
You are sensiitive now. Its bette than being a cynic. I believe .
LikeLike