Denton, Sally 1953-

PERSONAL:

Born September 26, 1953, in Elko, NV; daughter of Ralph (an attorney) and Sara (a political consultant) Denton; married Robert Samuel, 1984 (divorced, 1995); married Roger Morris, 1998; children: Ralph, Grant, Carson. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Attended University of Nevada, Reno, 1970-72; University of Colorado, Boulder, B.A., 1974. Politics: "Green." Religion: Episcopalian. Hobbies and other interests: Skiing, horseback riding, bicycling.

ADDRESSES:

Home—NM. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Knopf Publicity, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and journalist. Investigative journalist with Rio Grande Sun, Rio Arriba, NM; WKYT-TV, Lexington, KY; and UPI, Washington, DC. Goldstein & Denton and Hougan & Denton (private investigation firms), Washington, DC, managing partner.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Lannan Literary grant, 2000; Western Heritage Awards, 2002 and 2004; Nevada Silver Pen Award for distinguished literary achievement, 2003, for body of work.

WRITINGS:

The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs, and Murder, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1989.

(With husband, Roger Morris) The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America, 1947-2000, Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.

American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857, Knopf (New York, NY), 2003.

Faith and Betrayal: A Pioneer Woman's Passage in the American West, Knopf (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to author Jack Anderson's "Washington Merry-Go-Round" nationally syndicated column; contributor to periodicals, including Penthouse, American Heritage, Columbia Journalism Review, and the New York Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sally Denton entered the business of journalism editing her hometown weekly newspaper in Boulder City, Nevada. Her coverage of local politics, which Denton called "rather candid" in a Borzoi Reader Online article, eventually got her fired. She then went to the Rio Grande Sun in northern New Mexico, where one of her major stories exposed drug trafficking involving officials in the state government and law enforcement. She then went to work for Jack Anderson in Washington, DC, writing for his nationally syndicated column "Washington Merry-Go-Round." Anderson was a controversial figure throughout the 1970s due to his sensationalist brand of journalism, though he also exposed key evidence in the Watergate investigation and won, in 1972, a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on foreign affairs. That combination of unorthodox style and effective investigation would later characterize Denton's own work.

After her time with Anderson, Denton went to Lexington, Kentucky, to work as an investigative reporter for the CBS affiliate WKYT-TV. Her coverage of a young woman's disappearance eventually developed into a story implicating several members of Kentucky high society and Kentucky state officials. That story turned into her first book, The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs, and Murder. The key actors in the story are Drew Thornton and Bradley Bryant, the heads of "the Company," an underground organization that engaged in gunrunning, drug smuggling, corruption, and murder. The book also focuses on police officer Ralph Ross, who brought Thornton and Bryant to justice, and on the Company's possible connections to then-governor John Y. Brown, Jr. Publishers Weekly contributor Genevieve Stuttaford commented that Denton "present[s] a dramatic picture of a lengthy, unresolved criminal investigation." Writing in Booklist, Dennis Dodge found much of the book to be "meticulously" researched. Dodge also remarked on the level of "hype" in the work, however, suggesting that Denton's attempt to connect other major political and social figures was "unnecessary," since her "core story, which is admirably substantiated, is engrossing enough."

One of the most controversial stories Denton has worked on is "The Crimes of Mena," an investigative report maintaining that throughout the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations, the CIA was running drugs through the airport in the small town of Mena, Arkansas. She wrote the article with Roger Morris, a member of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon as well as an investigative journalist and a biographer of Nixon. The story was to be published by the Washington Post in January 1995, but after several delays, and moved by fears that the Post would finally kill the story, Denton and Morris decided to pull the story from the Post and find another venue for publication. "The Crimes of Mena" was eventually published in Penthouse, leading some critics to question the integrity of the story.

Denton and Morris also collaborated on her next major work, The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America. In it they attempt to connect the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and the administrations of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton to Las Vegas corruption. Denton has suggested that the book about Las Vegas is in some ways the culmination of her journalism career. In the Borzoi Reader Online Web site, Denton wrote: "In short, from 1977 to 1995, every significant story I ever covered as a journalist wound back to Las Vegas, including my first collaboration with Roger Morris on drug trafficking and money laundering in Arkansas. Against this background, coming together with Roger and deciding to approach Las Vegas as a prism for the larger story of American corruption over the last half of the 20th century was a natural outcome of my writing career and experience. Because so many trails seemed to lead to Las Vegas, we saw it as richly and ominously symbolic."

Like some of Denton's earlier work, The Money and the Power faced charges of sensationalism and questionable validity from some reviewers. Nonetheless, James McManus, writing in the New York Times Book Review, commented that the authors "orchestrated a vast array of sources into a nuanced indictment," and noted that "most of the book's soundings seem true." Adam Dunn, reviewing the book for CNN.com, similarly remarked upon Denton and Morris's "formidable, complex analysis." Los Angeles Times contributor Michael Harris noted that "if, as is likely, most all of The Money and the Power is true, it's one of the most important nonfiction books published in the United States in that halfcentury." Moreover, critics found the book highly readable. A Publishers Weekly contributor called it "undeniably disturbing and engrossing." CNN.com's Dunn wrote that The Money and The Power was "a fascinating read."

Denton looks to misdeeds further in the past in her book American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857. The story revolves around a wagon train of 140 Arkansas natives on their way to California. Loaded with gold, the wagon train was attacked and the members killed. Denton uses government files and other documents, such as diaries and depositions, to place the blame for the nineteenthcentury massacre on the Mormon church leader Brigham Young, despite the church's longtime insistence that the killings were perpetrated either by a Mormon who had been ousted from the church or the Paiute Indians. "Denton's extensively researched account of this atrocity is both convincing and chilling," wrote George Cohen in Booklist. Writing in Library Journal, Daniel Leistman called the book "crisp and compelling." A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the author "is a marvelous writer who keeps this work of popular history as fresh and engaging as any novel."

Maintaining her focus on the old West, Denton takes a more personal approach to her writing as she tells the story of her great-great grandmother in Faith and Betrayal: A Pioneer Woman's Passage in the American West. Drawing largely from Jean Rio Griffith's diaries, Denton recounts how the widowed Mormon convert traveled from England to America by ship and then across the country in a wagon train to join the Mormon community in Utah. However, Denton's grandmother found that the paradise described by the Mormon missionaries in England was, in her eyes, little more than an authoritarian, polygamous existence. Disillusioned, Jean eventually left the Mormon life and moved to California. "This well-written book is a useful addition to the literature on the Mormon experience," wrote Stephen H. Peters in Library Journal. Margaret Flanagan, writing in Booklist, commented that the author's "attention to historical and descriptive detail enhances this testament to the pioneer spirit."

Denton told CA: "I have been writing since I was eight years old. My impetus then, as now, was to shed light on those uncomfortable, unwelcome, and deadly serious truths everyone seemed so intent on ignoring. I was unfortunately plagued by the sorrows and mysteries of three untimely deaths in my impressionable years: a beloved brother who died of a scalding; a beloved boyfriend who died climbing a mountain; a beloved college roommate who was brutally murdered. All of my work has emanated from an obsession to find meaning in the meaninglessness, to reveal the indistinguishable in the vapors, to seek truth in the lies.

"That I have achieved success in a quarter-century-long journalism career is an accident, for I have never followed the prescribed path. My models for truth telling in American society span literature and history, and ultimately my inspirations have been the literary journalists who examine the junctures of culture, politics, and art—regardless of their genres. For social conscience I turn to Kafka, Dostoevsky, J.K. Huysman, Upton Sinclair, and John Steinbeck, and for character development I look to Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Gustave Flaubert. For historical perspective I honor Michael Shaara, Howard Zinn, and Fawn Brodie. For technique I look to Thomas Berger, Joan Didion, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. For place and setting I admire John McPhee, Larry McMurtry, Jim Harrison, and Cormac McCarthy.

"My writing process is not separate from my daily life. All that I experience and learn find a place on my pages. While forced into a discipline that comes of a working mother raising three sons—writing between the early morning school bus arrival and its late afternoon return—I strictly adhere to a thousand-words-a-day rule when I'm under deadline. In the luxurious months of research the process is more relaxed, the hours interspersed between libraries and long hikes, phone interviews and horseback rides.

"If there is a pattern or link in the subjects about which I have chosen to write, it is to give a voice to those who have been silenced by society—whether by murder, disenfranchisement, or weakness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 15, 1990, Dennis Dodge, review of The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs, and Murder, p. 1127; February 1, 2001, Brad Hooper, review of The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America, 1947-2000, p. 1019; May 15, 2003, George Cohen, review of American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857, p. 1636; March 15, 2005, Margaret Flanagan, review of Faith and Betrayal: A Pioneer Woman's Passage in the American West, p. 1260.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 1990, review of The Bluegrass Conspiracy, p. 153; February 1, 2001, review of The Money and The Power, p. 160.

Library Journal, March 1, 2001, Karl Helicher, review of The Money and the Power, p. 112; June 1, 2003, Daniel Leistman, review of American Massacre, p. 138; April 1, 2005, Stephen H. Peters, review of Faith and Betrayal, p. 108.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 10, 2001, Michael Harris, review of The Money and the Power.

New York Times, April 13, 2001, Michiko Kakutani, "Viva Las Vegas? The Dark Side of Neon," p. B37.

New York Times Book Review, April 15, 2001, James McManus, review of The Money and the Power, p. 10.

Pacific Historical Review, November, 2001, Hal K. Rothman, review of The Money and the Power, p. 627.

Publishers Weekly, January 26, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of The Bluegrass Conspiracy, p. 411; February 26, 2001, Ed Nawotka, "PW Talks with Sally Denton and Roger Morris," and review of The Money and the Power, p. 69; June 30, 2003, review of American Massacre, p. 73; April 11, 2005, review of Faith and Betrayal, p. 49.

Wall Street Journal, March 19, 1990, Andrew Blum, "Bluebloods as Drug Smugglers and Murderers," p. A16.

Wilson Quarterly, summer, 2001, John Bloom, review of The Money and the Power, p. 119.

ONLINE

Borzoi Reader Online,http://www.randomhouse.com/ (August 22, 2001), description of The Money and the Power; (November 9, 2001), "Sally Denton on Growing Up in the Glow of Las Vegas."

CNN Web site,http://www.cnn.com/ (April 17, 2001), Adam Dunn, "Book About Vegas Full of Cynical Nuggets."