Falling through the Earth: a memoir

From her father, Danielle Trussoni learned to rock and roll, outrun cops, and never to shy away from a fight. She spent her childhood sitting by his side at Roscoe's Vogue Bar, listening hour after hour as he told unforgettable tales of his adventures as a Vietnam tunnel rat. Far from home, as the war exploded, Dan Trussoni had risked his life crawling through intricate tunnels, designed by the North Vietnamese, where he searched for prisoners. Danielle took in every syllable of what he told her. And, as her family's life grew harder and more complicated, she came to realize that when the man she loved more than anything hurt her or her mother, or drank too much, or beat up strangers, it was because of what he had seen down there, what he thought he could just leave behind.But Dan's war followed their family, changing them every step of the way. Eventually Danielle's mother gave up and asked Dan to leave their home. All of the children stayed with her, except one: Danielle. When most of the world washed its hands of Dan, his daughter would not. She could never let him go. Studying him like a history book, she came to understand that the war that had come between her parents and altered her family's life had changed many American lives, on and off the battlefield.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. 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 dad through 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.Told without an ounce of self-pity, Danielle Trussoni's deeply affecting book shows how war keeps changing everything - even after the last shots are fired.

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