VERSAILLES, Ky. — Erin Chandler hails from Kentucky political royalty. But she says her upbringing with her dad, Dan Chandler, brought her into the circle of Las Vegas entertainers, high rollers — and drug smugglers.

“My father raised us in an environment that was equal parts moral high ground and seedy criminality,” she writes in her new book, “Bluegrass Sons, A True Crime Memoir.”

Chandler’s book, published in September, focuses on her family’s history — which includes a famed Kentucky governor — and her own childhood, growing up in a world that she’s just now, as an adult, beginning to understand.

Included in that world: a family connection to the infamous Kentucky police officer-turned-drug-smuggler Andrew Thornton — known as Drew to Chandler’s family.

Thornton died on a smuggling run in 1985 when his parachute did not open after he jumped from a plane in Knoxville. Thornton was wearing a bulletproof vest when he died, and he had about $4,500 in cash, knives, guns, night vision equipment, and a duffel bag containing millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine.

The wild tale has been covered widely in media since then, including in the book “The Bluegrass Conspiracy” by Sally Denton, and as the loose inspiration for the 2023 horror comedy movie “Cocaine Bear,” in which a black bear finds the cocaine and eats it.

Chandler’s book covers some of the same ground as “The Bluegrass Conspiracy,” but from a different point of view: that of herself and her uncle Bradley Bryant, who figured prominently in Denton’s book.

“I hope anybody that ever read ‘The Bluegrass Conspiracy’ will read this book,” Chandler said in a recent interview.

‘Still discovering things’

Chandler grew up in the 1970s, splitting time between the homes of her mother and her dad, who worked as the host of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

“It was the ‘70s. It was a wild time,” Chandler said. “His job was to wine and dine these gamblers.”

And some of those gamblers turned out to be major drug smugglers.

“Daddy cavorted with people from both sides of the bench, both sides of the aisle and both sides of the law,” Chandler wrote.

She said in an interview that she’s “still discovering things.”

“My dad’s playing cowboys and Indians in real life,” she said in the interview. “He did some dangerous things, and we were right along for the ride.”

Her cast of characters ranges from drug trafficker Jamiel Chagra, who Chandler knew as “Jimmy,” and Charles Harrelson, a convicted hitman and the father of actor Woody Harrelson, to Lexington socialite Anita Madden and Gov. John Y. Brown.

At the center of it all are her father and his brother-in-law, Chandler’s uncle Bradley Bryant.

Chandler, enthralled by the entertainers she met at her father’s casino, pursued a career as an actress in California before returning to Kentucky, where she has completed master’s degrees in creative writing at Spalding University and in theater at the University of Kentucky.

She said health issues that confronted her in her 30s “pulled me away from my acting world” and toward her education.

Chandler now lives in Versailles, in “The Cabin,” a home built in 1936 for her grandfather, former Kentucky Gov. A.B. “Happy” Chandler, who also served as a U.S. Senator and as Major League Baseball commissioner helped racially integrate the sport by permitting Jackie Robinson to play in the major leagues.

“Bluegrass Sons” is not the first time Chandler has plumbed the depths of her family’s dynamics by putting pen to paper.

She explored her tumultuous youth and her close relationship with her late brother, “Chan,” in her 2017 memoir “June Bug Versus Hurricane.” That was followed in 2019 by “Cinderella Sweeping Up,” a volume of short essays, some of which feature her family.

She’s already at work on her next book, “Nervous Blood,” about caring for her aunt, who developed Alzheimer’s.

“I can’t decide whether to make it fiction or memoir,” she said.

Chandler said she spent four years researching and writing “Bluegrass Sons,” starting in 2020 with hours of interviews with her uncle Brad Bryant, who spent years in federal prison for drug crimes.

She said a television crew had contacted her, and she helped them set up an interview with her uncle. Then someone asked her, “Why aren’t you writing this book?”

“We just started from the beginning,” she said. “I knew there was all this folklore with Drew Thornton and Uncle Brad.”

‘Playing hardball with bad guys’

Thornton and Bryant became friends while attending Sewanee Military Academy in Tennessee as teens.

Thornton went on to become a narcotics officer for the Lexington Police Department, but in the early 1980s was part of a group accused of stealing weapons from a California military installation in a case that also involved marijuana smuggling on a large scale.

Thornton was not charged in the weapons theft case, and he ultimately ended up pleading guilty to a misdemeanor drug charge.

Thornton then died at 40 in the parachute plunge, sparking decades of fascination about his life.

By that time, Bryant was serving a federal prison sentence — the result, Chandler said, of “a good guy playing hardball with bad guys.”

What emerged from her research, Chandler says, is a picture of two men who grew up indoctrinated with a military mindset, and then became pawns of a government agency that later abandoned them.

Chandler says the 2023 movie “Cocaine Bear” turned Thornton’s story “into a punchline.”

Rather than “ne’er do well rich kids who turned privilege and connections into drug trading, greed, and murder,” as Chandler says Thornton and her uncle have been portrayed, she says they were actually working with the CIA, trying to “aid in a top-secret mission to infiltrate the country’s drug culture at the outset of America’s war on drugs.”

“They were the exact type that the CIA would want,” Chandler said in an interview. “They were formed by our government.”

Chandler said her uncle had not told his side of the story publicly before.

“I think it helped him,” she said. “He really wanted to talk about it,” though she said he was careful not to “say any names, to hurt anybody.”

The argument that Bryant was involved with the CIA has been put forth previously, including by Bryant’s defense at trial, though Chandler’s book expands on and explores the idea in depth.

A 1989 Herald-Leader report said prosecutors rejected the argument that the CIA was involved, saying “nothing could be further from the truth.”

“The office of General Counsel of the CIA has caused a thorough check of the agency’s Office of Personnel, Office of Security and Directorate of Operations. There is no record of any association between the CIA and the defendant,” a sentencing memo at the time stated.

But Chandler offers supporting evidence from interviews with her uncle, his attorney and others, and she says her uncle would not have been the first person the government used and then disowned when caught in criminal activity.

“I can’t even imagine living that kind of life,” she said. “I think it’s fascinating how our government works ... how every family member of someone who’s under this pact of secrecy is affected.”

Chandler said she would love to see the book become a documentary.

“Bluegrass Sons” was published by Rabbit House Press, which is co-owned by Chandler and Emily Wilhoit.

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