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.
YOUR GRATEFUL OR YOU ARE NOT
In a Sunday silence, she hopscotches to a nuance in 2018 when a handsome man offered a hand of conversation.
He walked with her and stopped in front of a Spanish Colonial residence shrouded in exotic flora and fauna.
“ That’s where I live,” he said keenly.
“ How long have you lived there? she asked
“ Thirteen years. I am so grateful for my home.”
She silenced her thoughts, less thankful of her dome.
She once lived on a street
Of serenity and beauty
Her view was scoured with a sightlessness of New Mexican history
Unshaken by the homes regal display
To live without grateful when your basket is complete.
Lou Lou, your pictures are very sweet, so is the story. It is so difficult to be grateful. You don’t even realize what you have is worth millions until you lose it. I think that’s true for everyone. Better times are waiting for you; just a little more patience. 😘
On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 4:29 PM STEP BEHIND MY SCREEN OF STORIES. The inner voice where gaps of expressi
One response to “YOUR GRATEFUL OR YOU ARE NOT”
Lou Lou, your pictures are very sweet, so is the story. It is so difficult to be grateful. You don’t even realize what you have is worth millions until you lose it. I think that’s true for everyone. Better times are waiting for you; just a little more patience. 😘
On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 4:29 PM STEP BEHIND MY SCREEN OF STORIES. The inner voice where gaps of expressi
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