In Falling Through the Earth, Danielle Trussoni tells the all-American story of a family's war and peace and all that lay in-between. Funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully written, this is the story of a family forever altered by forces not under their control and a father and daughter too much alike to get along or to leave each other. As Danielle trails her father through his honky-tonk nights, scores of girlfriends, and years of bad dreams, a vivid and poignant portrait of a father-daughter relationship unlike any other emerges.

A very unique brutally honest memoir of what PTSD looked like for one family. The descriptions of the tunnels in Vietnam were fascinating. ( )

A vivid and poignant portrait of a daughter's relationship with her father, this funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully written memoir "makes plain that the horror of war doesn't end in the trenches"

As Danielle trails her father through nights at Roscoe's Vogue Bar, scores of wild girlfriends, and years of bad dreams, a vivid and poignant portrait of a father-daughter relationship unlike any other emerges. Although the Trussonis are fiercely committed to each other, theirs is a love story filled with anger, stubbornness, outrageous behavior, and battle scars that never completely heal.

Beautifully told in a voice that is defiant, funny, and yet sometimes heartbreaking, Falling Through the Earth immediately joins the ranks of those classic memoirs whose characters imprint themselves indelibly into readers' lives.

In this awkward weave of her father's tale with her self-absorbed growing-up memoir, Trussoni sacrifices emphasis and dilutes empathy. Danielle is endlessly forgiving of this case-hardened vet who is relentlessly mean, paranoid and petty. He is a prototype of the guy who came home and didn't know why he was a survivor. Trussoni has captured the essence of being in bloody battle one day and home the next, and then trying to make sense of it all.

It helps one to understand somewhat more of our soldiers from Vietnam or any war for that matter that didn’t get the help they needed to cope with all they went thru in war.
Her father just wasn’t able to cope and the sadness how it affected his daughter and whole family. Danielle is a strong, loving person who was dealt a bad hand. I shed many tears while reading this book. Heartwarming, heart wrenching, and eye-opening.

Danielle finds herself sometimes the responsible adult, sometimes a stubborn teenager all over again. But in the end, what we discover is that this father and daughter is more than anything is the love and the toughness that makes them alike.

I would happily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys memoirs. This writer has a great future and I will look forward to more of her books. ( )

Excellent memoir by the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran who spends her childhood trying to cope with and understand her volatile dad. The book follows her life with him in one thread and her recent trip to Vietnam in another. It seems to me that the childhood reminiscence bits are more successful than her attempt to retrace her father's wartime footsteps. The Vietnam thread would have been far more interesting if she had included her interviews with her father, verbatim, or if he had gone with her on the trip. As it is, her combat recreations seem speculative and the inclusion of her metaphoric (?) pursuer just a little too self consciously artistic.

These are minor quibbles, though, it really is a very good book. ( )

In her emotional memoir, Danielle Trussoni writes about her relationship with her father throughout her early life. Dan Trussoni was her mentor throughout her childhood, and even though he was untrustworthy, drank heavily, and had a terrible temper, she always stuck with him. Trussoni writes about life before her parents divorced, as well as her decision to live with her father rather than stay with her mother. As she grows older, her relationship with him changes dramatically, and she begins to wonder why he is the way he is, and her search takes her back to Vietnam, where her father served as a tunnel rat during the war. Although this book was interesting and emotional throughout, I thought that her life stories could have been shared in a way that made the reader connect more with her emotions throughout her life. Part of the reason that it was harder to connect with her was her hard exterior, which she used to protect herself during her childhood, which made her and the reader disconnected from her emotions. Personally, I found the stories about her childhood to be more interesting than those from while she was in Vietnam, which made me lose some interest at the end, where the focus shifts more to her later life. All in all, I found Falling Through the Earth to be a good read, but not the most compelling or emotional book I have ever read.

Sarah S.