Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir

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.

Trussoni's ability to portray her life behind the scenes living with a victim of the Vietnam war is astounding. To "review" the book is too vague. The book is so deep with tone shifts, sensuous passages and true stories, that a simple sentence cannot equate the feelings after finishing the book. The extent of internal, emotional connections she creates with her reader is rare if not unseen in most memoirs. What other book can leave one simotaneously feeling a sense of sympathy and ardent hatred? Falling Through the Earth is a book for someone who wants not only a deep and revealing work of literature, but also desires a style of writing that is only exposed by one that has truly lived the experience.

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 show more 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. show less

Danielle Trussoni’s memoir was one of the most thought provoking and inspiring I have ever read. It was written with such eloquence, and managed to transport me to the tunnels in Vietnam, or to put me in the middle of another of her family fights. I was in Roscoe’s bar shooting for drinks, and taking money from her father’s gun cabinet. Trussoni’s writing was so descriptive, and used such imagery that her life became mine as I was reading. I could see through the eyes of Trussoni, as i was reading i started to sweat. My shoulders tightened, my breathing quickened, i was uncomfortable. But it was impossible to stop reading, the pages seemed to turn themselves.

Trussoni has a gift. She speaks to the reader like an old friend, but show more also manages to keep her distance. She immerses the reader in her life's story, makes a connection, but always speaks with an air of mistrust. It was like i plunged head first into her life, not bothering to take a deep breath. She, however, carefully tasted each word, rolled it around on her tounge making sure it was just right, had the right effect. Because of this careful planning, the carefully picked anecdotes, i was hooked. I couldn't put the book down. I was incapable of doing anything else but read it. When i wasn't reading my mind was on the story, when i was reading it, nothing around me registered. If this is not the sign of a talented author, a person so married to the language that she knows its ins and outs, mountains and valleys, like her own, then i do not know what is.

To the future reader of this incredible novel, read carefully, ask questions. It has as many hidden passageways as the tunnels Trussoni visited in Vietnam. show less

This memoir had a strong impact on me. Going into it, I was very doubtful of the fact that I would enjoy it. However, a combination of precise diction and a sharp memory, Trussoni explains to the reader the ups and downs of living with a Vietnam veteran. The daily struggle and after effects of growing up with one are many, and Trussoni tells her story without a hint of sympathy, although I found myself feeling bad for her.

Danielle Trussoni, author of Falling through the Earth, is as much a casualty of the Viet Nam war as was her father, Dan, who returned from that war as damaged goods, a man unable to show his wife and children that he loved them. Trussoni's benign neglect of his children forced them to grow up tough and able to solve their own problems because he was a firm follower of the old adage that "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Sadly, their situation shows clearly how the crippling aftereffects of combat can be so easily passed on from one generation to the next, making one wonder where the cycle finally ends.

Dan Trussoni was a volunteer tunnel rat in Viet Nam, one of those incredibly brave men who went alone into the underground show more tunnel system that allowed Viet Cong soldiers to disappear at will and that provided them with a safe haven to recover from wounds and to hide food and weapons until they were needed. These young American soldiers, armed with little more than a pistol and a flashlight, had to crawl through booby traps and utter darkness never knowing what awaited them around the next corner as they tried to clean out the systems they discovered. It is little wonder that they came back with mental scars that never really heal.

Danielle became aware at an early age of how her father's Viet Nam experience impacted his life. She found the pictures of dead bodies and the human skull that he brought home. She also found that she was largely going to have to raise herself after her parents split up and she decided to live with her father. Dan Trussoni's idea of a little quality time with his daughter was to bring her to his favorite neighborhood bar in which she spent so much time that she was considered to be one of the regulars.

Life for the Trussoni kids was full of surprises, including the appearance of an illegitimate half-sister and a full sister who had been placed for adoption by their parents who felt too young and overwhelmed to keep her when she was born. Danielle was her father's daughter in every way, fearless, tough, brash and willing to take whatever life threw her way. That personality led her to Viet Nam, alone, where she saw for herself some of the same sights and experienced a little of the fear that her father felt while he was there, even forcing herself to "tour" one of the famous tunnel systems with a guide.

Falling through the Earth, with chapters that alternate between views of growing up in the Trussoni family, Dan's Viet Nam war, and Danielle's own trip there, is a fascinating book, one that makes me wish that we would make absolutely certain that our wars are really necessary before we send our young men into them.

Rated at 3.0 show less

I had to read this book for a summer assignment, but I was told by my sister that I would thoroughly enjoy it. She was right. This book had such an emotional charge, that I found myself only able to take a few chapters at a time. The reality of Danielle Trussoni's life was so heartbreaking to me, that I often found myself about to cry. I couldn't image a childhood like hers. I reflected upon my own childhood and the privileges and love I have received. Danielle Trussoni is amazing to me. She is strong. While reading I found myself hating her father because of his relationship with her. I wanted him to love her, needed him to love her. I wanted her father to open up about his problems about Vietnam, and when he didn't, found myself show more feeling disappointed. The whole experience was a little strange actually because it was the first time I really connected with a character. Every feeling was organic. Every story was real. There were no lies, no sugar coated stories to make you feel like the relationship between Trussoni and her father was fixed. I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anybody. show less