Customer Reviews

Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I have read several of the reviews both good and bad shown here; I have also followed some of the critical reviews in the various press encapcilations. Some make me laugh at their lack of real relevance to what a memoir is meant to be in literal construction. Others seem to "hit the nail on the head" as we say in Wisconsin,(both critical and in praise). Still others; like the person who stated they were "so mad they simply could not finish it and they want their money back." Too that person, whats your address? I think I will send you a check for clinical evaluation along with the refund; get a grip for Gods sake, or maybe cut back on the number of cups of coffee you drink.

Like all others I purchased the book from Amazon.com like anyone else. No, she didn't send me a autographed copy embellished with lots of little niceties.

I can assure any reader that the memoir is based entirely on fact! Sadly true, my brother, who had been his younger siblings closest mentor and confidant prior to his departure for Viet Nam, returned nothing like that person I loved.Poetic licenses, perhaps in some cases; I was not kept from the army becuase I was gay, but becuase My "Mom" convinced me to join the Seminary (at 17 years old) in concern for the four sons already in Viet Nam. A situation she managed to correct, incidently, through the lobby of her childhood friend who had become a Congessman.

While most of my family (her Fathers brothers and sisters)find the book "un-kind" and disturbing; frankly, I find it "mild" in comparison to what she could have added into the "Memoir" but did not for our sakes. I thank her for that but I won't be nearly so protective in my book (which I have been writing for nine years). No, I don't have a book deal and no this is not written to "polish any publishers apple" to get one. Its' merely written to verify the foundation of what Danielle' has written.

Honestly, and very sadly, knowing the circumstances of her childhood; without any preponderance of doubt,(now that her Father has died),I find the book very difficult to read without breaking down and sobbing due to its authenticity. She is a young lady I'am very proud to call my Niece and a girl that has worked extremely hard to spare my families feelings while accomplishing her goals. Just a young girl that grew into a woman admiring a man beset with the many "Demons" he could not over come too give her the love she constantly hoped for! Upon his death last month, it appears that longing will never be fullfilled. Thank You! Patrick Trussoni

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail regarding the plot of this book, because others before me have done that for you. What I'm here to do is clarify. One person wrote in their review that they're upset that the author is "so into herself" and the book wasn't about war. Um, go back to school and learn the meaning of the word "memoir" before you go buying another book and trashing it unjustly. The book IS a memoir. It's the author's perception of her own life. Of COURSE she focuses the book on herself. That's the point. The book is not "chick lit masquerading as a commentation on war" or whatever it was that reviewer called it. It's the story of a girl's life, growing up with a Vietnam Vet for a father. It never promised to be about war specifically.

My opinion? It's beautiful. It's raw and honest and makes the reader compelled to keep reading. I didn't find the narrator unlikable at all. On the contrary, I found her vulnerable and sincere. I think that Danielle Trussoni did a wonderful job with this book, and I'm sorry that others felt the need to post their uninformed reviews.

~Book.of.the.moment

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.

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 suffered from WWII issues and drank his life away. In the case of this family, there are so many issues that they all choose to ignore, even though the issues presented themselves like gigantic elephants right I their front room. But this is like so many dysfunctional families and that is what makes this book so universal and not just related to having a PTSD father.

It is good to see that our author does pull her life together and goes on to college and gets a degree in social work; but one wonders if she has exorcised all those inner demons and if they will continue to haut her. I think writing this memoir perhaps purged a part of that for her.

I feel that this book is a must read for many reasons. However, if the author's personal story gives others more understanding how PTSD infects and changes everyone else around them--then that is a good start. But a better result would be the recognition for the need to seek help as soon as possible for the health of everyone. This book was no doubt therapeutic for the author; my hope is that others will also find it helps to heal them as well.

I finished this book late in the night and am up early to write my review and the book cover image of that little girl being held by her father sits on my desk crying out to me. This was a tough read for me but I feel it delivered a message of hope as well. I am looking forward to seeing how our young author hero goes forth with the rest of her life. God knows that anyone one who reads this will be rooting for her to succeed!

The MWSA gives this book its highest rating of FIVE STARS and as an additional rating of Five Kleenex Boxes! I personally endorse this book and recommend that you add it to your book purchase list. This is really good!

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.

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.

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 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.

I found this book crisply written, unsentimental and deeply moving. I have a daughter of my own, and although I did not serve in Viet Nam, but rather opposed the war, it was a watershed moment for my generation. I relate to growing up with alcoholism. The author has done herself proud.

I am a Vietnam vet from southwest Wisconsin who could identify with many of the characters in the memoir. I had the pleasure of hearing Ms. Trussoni read a chapter and respond to comments and questions, even the James Frey question. Her father would be proud. I laughed and I cried as I the read the book. It is an easy read but the words are tight and powerful. The Wisconsin flavor is so true. It is more a story about a remarkable family and redemption then war. I do wonder whether the war changed her father or whether the war was only another excuse. Some of my Wisconsin characters never went to war and had similar struggles but were not able to redeem themselves.

This is a book in the best tradition of the memoir, tying together the loose strands and far-reaching consequences of war in an immediate, suspenseful way.

Its emotional authenticity makes it a skillful, engrossing story of journeys - that of a haunted father and a daughter's attempt to understand him. Trussoni, like her father, survived a life of surreal circumstances.

Oh, and God, if I read one more review saying this book is self-indulgent, or the author "seemed so into herself." Have ya ever read a memoir before? If it's not about the author, who is it supposed to be about?