Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir

by Danielle Trussoni

Book Overview

A daughter's unforgettable memoir of her wild and haunted father, a man whose war never really ended From her father, Danielle Trussoni learned rock and roll, how to avoid the cops, and never to shy away from a fight. Growing up, she was fascinated by stories of his adventures as a tunnel rat in Vietnam, where he risked his life crawling headfirst into holes to search for American POWs held underground. Ultimately, Danielle came to believe that when...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805077324
• ISBN13: 9780805077322
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A daughter's memoir of life with a dysfunctional family and PTSD Father

There are some books that you want to read for pure joy of entertainment but this is not one of those--this is a book that you will be compelled to read and unable to put down until you have read that last page and are totally emotionally exhausted! "Falling Through The Earth" by Danielle Trussoni is a heavy and deeply moving tale of her life living and surviving with her dysfunctional family and PTSD father. There is so much hurting and wasted relationship opportunities as you read this unfolding tale of Danielle's life. You emotionally want to reach out and give her a big rescuing hug and pull her out of the depths of her outer and inner environment. This is not a happy tale with any kind of "Leave it to Beaver" or "The Brady Bunch" ending. This is real life and unfortunately, it is a story that is not so isolated or rare. PTSD destroys more families then anyone might dare to count. Danielle comes across first and foremast as a survivor. But like her own father who survived Vietnam, that is not enough spiritually or emotionally. She sees things that a small child should not and is dragged through bars and her parents divorce and though childhood. She loves her father and desperately seeks that in return. However, her dad is not capable of showing those kinds of emotions any more and she is left hungry for attention and hugs and love. She does the rebellion routine that some teenage girls go though with drinking, drugs, shop lifting, sex and wild friends. Though out all that she endures she still loves her father and still keeps reaching out to find his empty arms and hollowed out heart. She decides to take a life altering trip to Vietnam and visit the places her dad was stationed. She also makes it a point to visit and go into the tunnels at Chu Chi. Her father was a "tunnel rat" and she wanted to experience what it must have felt like for him back in 1968. She finds Vietnam scary and has someone even stalk and attack her. But she gains a new found respect for what her father had to endure in that war ravaged country. She could only image what it was like then but she did get a taste of the possibilities. Danielle is a gifted writer and she takes us on a journey of the heart and allows us to see and feel her pain. She uses phrasing and wording like a razor sharp scalpel in the hands of a surgically trained doctor. She avoids feeling sorry for herself and actually underwrites and emotionally understates huge events in her life like her parents divorce. One can detect the awful pain of that for a young child. Her discovery of the "rest of her family" adds another dysfunctional twist to her life as does her father's cancer and health issues. But the real story in the cerebral and spiritual toll this women endured--in the truest sense she and her entire family are all victims of her dad's PTSD and they all suffered right along with him. I personally could identify with her dysfunctional family issues having had a step-father who su

VIETNAM'S NEVER-ENDING AFTERSHOCKS...

This is an amazing book, in that it's really 3 books working all at once toward a single resolution. On one level, it's a gut-busting memoir about being the daughter of a tormented Vietnam vet whose life is a non-stop effort to outrun his own memories; the father's time in Vietnam was largely spent as a so-called "tunnel rat" when the war peaked in 1967-68. It was relentlessly dangerous & traumatic duty. Later, growing up as the daughter who stayed with her Dad while her 2 siblings stayed with their mother following a divorce, the author did what far too many adolescents have to do for their hard-drinking and highly dysfunctional parents: she parented the parent; she was a child surrounded by endless distress signals--the daily boozing and the nightly "girlfriends" that her father accumulated; the run-ins with police regarding everything from the Dad's drunk driving to her own shoplifting sprees, etc. That's one story. On a second level, there's the story of her quest to learn all she can (as an older college student) about her father's Vietnam experiences and how and why he was so brutally affected. Then there's the memoir's third level of narrative: the author makes a trip to Vietnam and seeks out the region as well as the tunnels wherein her father's formative crises were endured. All through the book, this writer uses her major skills as a narrator to hold together these interweaving storylines; in the end, her attempts to help her cancer-ridden father make peace with his demons end the book on a note of reconciliation, acceptance and real love. This is a remarkable and really important work of literature.

it's time for this book

This book makes for engrossing reading, moving skillfully back and forth in time from vivid memories of a father's personal hell as a tunnel rat in Vietnam, to the author's recollection of a fractured post-war life with him, and finally the quest for closure that sparks the author's solo journey to Vietnam in an attempt to understand the pain her father feels and has inflicted on others. What is conveyed powerfully and succintly here is how the damage of war reaches far beyond the last battle, through generations, across cultures. This is also a particularly evocative period piece that paints a life in the Midwest, at a certain time, with uncanny authenticity. The viewpoint is particulary intriguing - that of a young girl so desperate to know her father she assumes the role of sidekick and witness in his nightly obliterations in seamy roadhouse bars. Trussoni's a natural storyteller. Her story and attitude is refreshingly confessional, self-effacing, sometimes brutal, but avoids the cliche narrative pitfalls of a tidy redemption or sentimentality.

A beautifully written memoir by the daughter of a Vietnam Vet

Danielle Trussoni's beautifully written memoir tells what it was like growing up with a father haunted by the ghosts of the Vietnam war. When she was twelve years old and her parents got divorced, the author moved in with her father across town, while her brother and sister stayed behind. Suffering from post-traumatic stress, her father was barely able to take care of himself, let alone a 12 year old daughter. He spends most of his free time at the local bar, his daughter seated on the stool beside him, telling her about his war exploits, occasionally engaging in brawls. Part of the strength of this book is its gorgeous prose. Of the women that her father brought home from the bar, the author writes: "They were a special breed, the kind with fire in their eyes and silver caps on their teeth. None were beautiful or solvent." Whether a particular war is just or unjust, the aftereffects are the same: the experience of battle does not go away quickly. This memoir, beautifully written, honestly rendered, shows how war reverberates through the families of the survivors: the failed marriages, scarred children, misdirected lives.